The Stars Are Going Out
by TheGrassIsGreener
Summary: The Doctor is trapped in Pete's World, not Rose. When the shock passes, she drags herself up by the bootstraps and carries on, determined to find a way to bring him home, and makes a few allies as she goes. On the other side of the void, the Doctor does the same.
1. Prologue: The Fall

**AN: I've been thinking about this idea for a while now, and read a story a few months ago with this premise, but that story, well written as it was, stuck rigidly to the original stories and didn't really do much but change the word "Doctor" to "Rose". I wanted to try the same thing, but make more substantial changes.**

 **I plan to feature the episodes from the show, but differently. Different approaches to the problems, with different characters (because Martha and Donna and the rest of the gang will all be there, but I've also planned for a couple of original companions). There might be some original adventures too!**

 **So, please don't let me ramble further, and enjoy reading. All feedback is welcome, though I ask you please keep it polite. Peace.**

* * *

It wasn't often that Rose ever felt sick with nerves nowadays. A couple of years at the Doctor's side had immunised her to those familiar dread-induced feelings in her stomach, but she didn't think she could be blamed for her roiling stomach as she attached her magna-clamp to the wall directly opposite his and activated it. Outside, the sounds of Daleks and Cybermen fighting each other and attacking the inhabitants of Earth rang out. She closed her eyes, tried to push away the truth of the implications of what was happening - separated from her mum forever, never see her again, fall into the void -

"The breach is open! _Into the Void!_ " the Doctor crowed victoriously. " _Ha!_ "

And so it began, and the sickness gripping Rose's body took fourth, or maybe fifth place in her list of priorities as to not fall into the void became her number one, two _and_ three. She clung to the clamp with all her might and squeezed her eyes shut against the scream of the void, the Daleks and Cybermen alike. Then, a sparking noise that was certainly out of place. Her eyes shot open, panic racking up higher as she whipped her head around to the lever right by her side - but it was still in position. The relief of seeing this was momentary, and passed in less than a second, because that's when she glanced over to the Doctor...

Who was no longer holding on to his own clamp, because it was _his_ lever that had short circuited. The pull of the void was weakening and the blurs rushing past her vision began to form into proper, solid beings - Daleks and Cybermen - and the room was about to be full of the things. Which was why the Doctor was reaching for his lever, to put it back online - only he couldn't _quite_ make it, and ended up releasing the clamp completely in favour of it.

" _Be careful!_ " she screamed, and she had no idea whether her voice reached him over the cacophony, but his eyes locked onto hers for a good two seconds, and his grip on the lever was remaining solid, because wiry he may have _looked_ , but the Doctor was no weed, and she thought then, for a handful moments that lasted forever, that everything would be okay.

The lever was locked back into place, and the suction increased again, but it didn't matter because the Doctor would maintain his grip. They would still get the job done and soon they would be heading back to the TARDIS -

Then his grip slackened, and Rose screamed again, and her horror continued and grew and multiplied as his fingers slid from the handle of the lever and he was holding onto nothing. And so he fell, and it was Rose's first instinct to let go of her magna-clamp, to reach him, but she could do nothing but scream again, this time the expulsion coming out as, " _DOCTOR!_ "

As he fell (and it was here that Rose realised _forever_ lasted a lot longer when it meant the one she loved was being ripped away from her) his gaze locked onto hers again, wide and just as horrified as she felt, because he was shooting straight for the void -

Then, in a speed up of time that almost gave her whiplash, Pete Tyler was there, catching him, and both were gone in a flash. Gone. _Gone._ It was a tremendous thing that she held onto her magna-clamp until the clearout was done, because Rose Tyler had just gone numb inside and out. When the suction died off and the void sealed, she landed on the floor with a dull thud (which didn't register with her, and a week later she would be confused as to how the bruising on her thigh came to be), and for a good few minutes she sat crumpled on the floor, staring at the blank white wall in front of her.

She turned, in a daze, to look to the other side of the room, where the Doctor's clamp was still stuck to the wall, and seeing it there with no Time Lord attached made it all slam into her, and yes, right then her body gave in to the sickness she had been feeling since the moment her mother had gone to Pete's World and she had stayed in her own.

Thanks to the lack of food she had eaten in the last few hours it was mostly stomach acid and the smell of it alone made her want to be sick all over again, but instead she stumbled away and to her feet, and she nearly fell back to the floor a couple of times in her bid to make it to the wall the Doctor had almost gone sailing through before her not-quite-dad had appeared from nowhere and saved him -

With a single massive sob, what had just happened hit Rose full force and she collapsed against the wall, banging her hands against it futilely and almost howling out the words, "Bring him back! _Bring him back to me!_ "

In another minute all the fight left her and she slumped against the wall again, drawing in desperate breaths and digging her nails against the plaster as if she could claw through to him. The Doctor. Her Doctor, who had just been taken away forever.

" _The breach itself is soaked in Void stuff. In the end it'll close itself_ ," he had said. " _And that's it. Kaput._ "

 _Kaput_.

The shock came next, seeping into her bones and fuzzing up her thoughts, to the point she almost forgot who she was, where she was, why she was in shock at all.

The word, "Doctor," escaped her lips in another sob, and she somehow resisted the urge to curl in on herself and instead forced herself back several paces until she was staring up at the blank wall. Sickness rose up again but she forced it down - and from then on, Rose was almost in autopilot.

Back through hallways and corridors and not giving a second glance at the bodies of fallen Torchwood employees - that was, the ones she noticed at all - she went back to the place she remembered the TARDIS was being held, and stumbled inside. If the Doctor managed to come back, if he figured something out, the TARDIS was where he would go. Thusly, that was where she would go, and wait for him.

The time-spaceship hummed mournfully as she sloped inside, the lights inside seeming dimmer. She closed the door behind her gently and realised she had started shaking, which only made her shake harder, and the TARDIS hummed again. It reminded her of the ship how she had first known it, and realised for the first time that in the time they had traveled together, the console room had become brighter.

"I'm -" She broke off with another sob and clamped a hand over her mouth. " _I'm sorry,_ " she managed to choke out to the sentient ship, who had just lost her pilot.

To the Time Lord, trapped in a universe not his own.

To Jackie Tyler, who would never see her daughter again.

Then, finally, to the universe at large, because whether it realised or not, it had just lost its' greatest defender.


	2. As the Dust Settles

**AN: Thank you to the people who followed or favourited this story! I'm excited for it to actually get going.**

* * *

The hum of the TARDIS numbed her. For what could have been minutes and what could have been hours Rose sat slumped in the jumpseat, staring at the time rotor and not seeing anything. However long she had waited though, she knew one thing; the Doctor had yet to return. The TARDIS continued to hum a low sound that wasn't distinguishable in any way, but that made her think of funeral marches.

The ugly sobbing of earlier had deceased but silent tears continued to roll down her cheeks and she was fairly certain she had never in her life been such a mess, not that she cared.

The shaking too had abated, but she was well aware that she had yet to recover from the shock; once or twice she had attempted to move, either to fetch water to wash her mouth out with, or just to wander so she was no longer stationary, but no matter how much she thought about moving, her body never listened, and she remained where she was, and waited.

The Doctor was trapped and gone, and so was her mother and Mickey, and hell, even Pete's World Pete. She was alone, and for the first time in many years, Rose felt loneliness seep into her bones. The last time she had felt such a way was back in the days of Jimmy Stone. She thought of the name, and the face to go with it, with a sneer of disgust, and told herself to think of different things - but what was there to think about? Her best friend was gone. No one to talk to.

Silence reigned on the good ship TARDIS and outside, the world continued to turn.

* * *

The Doctor had only one thing on his mind; getting back to his own universe. Back to his TARDIS, back to Rose. Both of them must have felt so lonely without him. At least as lonely as he felt at the moment. A terrible part of him wondered whether the TARDIS would die without her pilot and oldest friend there anymore, and he hoped against hope that she wouldn't. One way or another, rules of the multiverse be damned, he would be getting home again, and when he did he would need his Old Girl.

Resisting the push he felt against the back of his eyes, the Doctor shook himself and doubled his concentration. He stared down at his calculations, scribbled on the three whiteboards before him and on the pages upon pages of paper from over the last five days. Stopping himself from looking at the fourth whiteboard in the corner of the room, now with a hole punched through the middle, his brain continued to power on.

It had been a shocking fit of anger that wrecked the fourth whiteboard, and if he were able to care properly in the moment, he would have been angry with himself. He had thought he was _so close to an answer -_

Shaking his head and muttering, "Come on, Doctor," he forced his thoughts away from his failure and concentrated on all his other working theories. There had to be something. There just had to be.

At least Pete's World had its own Torchwood, though any mention of the name made firey hot molasses rage through his veins. It was their facilities he used, and the fact that the whiteboard had been a _Torchwood_ whiteboard had made him feel some small degree of satisfaction when a stray magnetic weight went sailing through it the day before.

There was a tentative knock on the door. The Doctor ignored it. The knock sounded again. He ignored it again.

"Hey, boss, mind if I come in?" Mickey the Idiot. Lovely.

Pushing down a sneer, he grunted, and the sound of approaching footsteps made his insides clench up despite knowing they weren't hostile. He reminded himself not to lash out, because that certainly wouldn't help.

"Jackie wants you to take a break, boss." Mickey had developed a habit of calling him "boss" a lot when he was nervous. The last time they had spoken, three days ago in that very room, the Doctor had counted twenty one "bosses" before giving up the count. The conversation had lasted about two minutes.

Mickey pressed on when he didn't answer. "She thinks you need to rest, or eat or something."

"Or something?" he repeated flatly, and his voice was somewhat gravelly from lack of recent use. Never before had the Doctor been so quiet. If Rose had been there, she might have found it funny. Made a joke. Something to make him crack a smile or a laugh, and make him believe that somehow, he would get them home.

Was it awful of him to wish that if he was going to be trapped like this at all, that it happened with her at his side?

"She wants you to come home, Doctor." He heard the irritation in Mickey's voice then, and grit his teeth against it.

"That's what I'm trying to do, Mickey," he said, barely refraining from snapping. "Getting myself home." To the TARDIS, Rose, his own world.

"That's not what I meant," Mickey snapped back. "You _know_ what I meant. Back to the manor."

That was where he was staying. Jackie had moved straight into Pete's mansion and had insisted that he went with her, because, "You ain't sleeping on no park bench while I have anything to say about it, mister!"

He had initially resisted, insisting that as a Time Lord with superior physiology he didn't have to sleep nearly as much as humans, but all that had earned him was further insistence and a look from the woman that suggested she wanted to slap him. Even in his - _emotionally compromised state_ , his self preservation was there to stop this coming to pass, and he had accepted she and Pete's offer with the most sincere thanks he could muster up at the time.

That didn't mean he actually had to go there, however, and after the first, dreadful night, where he had paced up and down in the guest room he had been given like a caged animal, he hadn't set foot in the place. Pete and Mickey had vouched for him at Pete's World Torchwood, and that was where he had been ever since.

"D'you think Rose is okay?" Mickey's subdued question had the Doctor stopping short, stiffening where he sat and drawing his lips into a thin line.

"I don't know." _He hoped against hope that she was._

"But what's she gonna do? She's all alone over there."

 _Not alone_ , he thought. _She has the TARDIS_. "I know she is," he bit out.

"What's she gonna do?"

 _How the hell should he know?_ "How the hell should I know?"

Mickey huffed at that and stormed out, and the Doctor was left in silence once again. He didn't even have it in him to feel relieved as Mickey's final question rolled around in his head.

 _What was Rose going to do?_

* * *

The sound of boots clomping against the floor outside startled Rose back into reality from her dazed position on the jumpseat. She whipped around to stare at the doors of the TARDIS, and jumped out of her skin when a clattering sound rang out, followed by a mingle of voices as people spoke to each other in low voices, too mumbled for her to make anything out.

She had been sat waiting for the Doctor for - _five hours_. It was nighttime. He still wasn't back. _Because he isn't coming back_ , a voice in her head hissed, and she glowered at nothing and snapped back, "Shut up." The TARDIS hummed lowly, in a warning manner, just before the sounds outside grew closer, and she realised that she had to do something.

After France, after Reinette, Rose had insisted he teach her at least the very basics. It had been her own way of venting her frustrations with the situation, after he had gone crashing through that stupid time window and she had been left waiting hours for him to return with Mickey making irritating remarks in her ear the entire time. Even then, she remembered him saying to her later, radiating smugness, " _He only came back as soon as he did thanks to luck. How long would we have waited for him without that fireplace? But he didn't think about that, did he?_ "

Rose had pursed her lips and told him to shove off because she didn't want to hear it, and right in the present moment, staring down at the console as sounds of life began to grow louder outside, she loathed to think of it even more.

 _"I need to know," she insisted, and he continued to make noises of dissent and avoid her eyes as he moved around the console. She screwed up her courage and persisted. "Look, Doctor, I don't want - I don't expect you to teach me how to fly her perfectly or something, but if anything ever happened and me and Mickey were stranded somewhere without -"_ Without you _, she finished in her head. Wincing and taking a breath, she said, "I need to at least know how to get us home if something awful happened._ "

 _Finally, he looked up from the console, where he was fiddling with one of the hundreds of non-descript buttons, and met her eyes. His own were flat and expressionless, and he sounded as such when he said, "Okay."_

Jumping at the sudden banging noise that came from somewhere surely close by, Rose shot into action, determined that no one should know she was there, with the TARDIS. What sort of people came to clean up after something like Canary Wharf? She thought back for a moment to Downing Street, and to UNIT, before one final crashing noise had her rushing to take herself into the vortex.

The TARDIS hummed in a manner she couldn't decipher as she worked, more slowly than the Doctor ever had, and she finalised by pulling the dematerialisation lever. Watching the time rotor begin to move up and down with a hammering heart, she felt herself relax marginally for the first time in hours as the TARDIS wheezed and groaned, and then she groaned herself as the sound made her tear up once again.

Moving slowly around to the monitor, she took a glance - and then a double take as she realised that the words on it were _English_. She had never seen them in anything other than Gallifreyan and as she understood it, that was the only language it displayed. She almost wanted to laugh when she remembered the Doctor - her _last_ Doctor - explaining to her, "She's the single most powerful ship in the entire universe, Rose. Why would she want to use a language as primitive as English?" in that way he did that managed to be dismissive and yet somehow not really offensive at the same time.

Laughing a watery laugh, she glanced up at the time rotor as the TARDIS hummed again, this time sounding commiseratory. She couldn't help but shoot the ship a weak smile; she supposed she wouldn't be completely alone as long as she had the TARDIS. As if she knew what Rose was thinking, the ship hummed again.

"Thanks girl," she whispered, voice destroyed by hours of crying and screaming at the void. She concentrated on the monitor again and saw that she had succeeded in getting them into the vortex. The thought managed to relax her somewhat, and she decided to stay where she was for a while longer.

Walking away from the monitor again, she looked around the console room and froze up at the sight of the Doctor's brown overcoat, slung over one of the coral struts by the door, where it always was when not with him. Rushing to pick it up, she clutched it to herself and hated herself when the first sob forced its way out of her throat. Without another pause, she retreated to her bedroom, coat in arms, and flung herself onto her bed, the horror of the day finally catching up with her as she fell into a restless sleep.

* * *

The TARDIS wouldn't stop humming at her.

It wasn't the usual sort of background noise that Rose would fall asleep to after a long day's adventuring, no. It was pointed, _at her_ to be specific, and if she didn't know better, she would say the ship was trying to nudge her into some sort of action. What action could she take, though? There was nothing _she_ could do. With the Doctor, maybe she was halfway capable, but without him… Well, she often thought back to last Christmas with a cringe, hearing herself bemoan her uselessness.

" _There's no one to save us now. Not anymore._ "

A spark of irritation shot through her at the memory, and she almost wanted to go back and slap herself in the face for her lack of faith and tell her to pull herself together. She thought, with a humourless huff of laughter, that she was one of the only people in the universe who could actually do just that.

The TARDIS hummed loudly again and she groaned, lifting her head up from her pillow to squint up at the ceiling.

"What do you want, eh?" she croaked. "Just leave me."

Her arms remained wrapped around the brown long coat she had clung to for the last few - days? Time didn't really exist on the TARDIS, but she couldn't deny the length of time she had spent wallowing when she actually acknowledged to herself how terribly hungry she was. At one point, she had fetched herself a glass of water in a halfhearted effort to not dehydrate, but that was it. The glass sat empty on her bedside table.

At her last remark, the TARDIS hummed indignantly and the lights to her bedroom shot on at full beam. She cried out and buried her head into the pillow.

" _Fine!_ " she cried. "I'm getting up! You hear me?" The lights dimmed at that so she assumed the ship had indeed heard, and with a groan she pushed herself up and to her feet.

The coat, she considered taking with her, but suddenly she felt as if she couldn't look at it for another second without getting back into bed, and so she left it crumpled there, and consequently left the comforting smell of the Doctor behind as she trudged out into the hall.

Leaning back against the closed door, Rose closed her eyes and tried to think clearly, for the first time in what she accepted had been days.

The walls of reality were closed, he said. There was no chance of passage between them, ever again. Rose understood this, and accepted that the Doctor knew infinitely better than she did. She also knew that it wasn't possible for a human to absorb the time vortex and survive. True, the action hadn't been without consequence - and thinking of her old friend with his silly ears and his leather jacket, her heart ached again - but it had happened. Somehow, she would make this happen too.

With a decisive nod to herself and one last moment of sadness, she screwed up her might into a compact and metaphorical ball, and marched off towards the library - only to detour to the kitchen when the TARDIS kept putting it in front of her.

She supposed she could take the time to eat something before her work began. Combing through every book the library held on inter-universe travel would be hungry work, after all.


	3. The Runaway Bride

**AN: Thanks for the response to this fic! I really appreciate it. So the first three chapters are posted now. I think from here on out I'll be posting every Sunday (though that isn't a strict rule), and the story is going to deviate from the canon even more than it already has! Please enjoy.**

* * *

It had been three months. Three months, all alone with the TARDIS, floating in the vortex. She couldn't bring herself to leave it, though she conceded to herself that at some point she would have to go back to Earth, if only to sort out things at the estate.

Tears swam in her vision again as she thought of the only home she'd known before meeting the Doctor and coming to call his ship "home". The flat would be empty from then on, dust gathering across the tops of her mum's favourite magazines and the phone left in its cradle for an amount of time it had never experienced before. Jackie Tyler's friends would be wondering where she had gone.

Rose shook her head and slammed the TARDIS manual shut with a resounding _thump!_ It had been three months of full-on study for her, on everything from the care and maintenance of a time-spaceship, to multiverse theories from civilisations that actually _understood_ the subject (twenty first century Earth message boards had steadily become more and more embarrassing to look at), and she had finally drawn a conclusion; the rift between the worlds was going to take time to heal. If she could only find a fracture, she could hopefully reach through it.

Shooting up from her seat and dashing from the library that had essentially become her home over the last few months, Rose sprinted to the console room, having just gone over a few last things in the manual. If she was going to do this, she wanted her memory as fresh as she could get it. Her TARDIS understanding was still painfully inadequate, and she imagined that it would take full years for her to come to a decent understanding of the ship, but for the moment she knew enough. She hoped.

"Out of the vortex," she muttered to herself, dashing around the console with a moderate level of confidence, "Locate a fracture…" And that was surprisingly easy now she knew what she was looking for! She remembered her previous attempt and cringed at herself. Her heartbeat picked up as she finally went looking for a power source, and the TARDIS pitched in her own efforts, taking Rose to a solar system devoid of life, the star in the centre dying.

That was a relief; she would have to burn it up for this to work if the studies she found were to be believed, and the thought that people might have been affected by her actions probably would have stopped her short, however badly she wanted this to work.

"Lets do it."

* * *

When the Doctor sensed the familiar call of his TARDIS, four months after his separation from her, his hearts stopped beating in his chest for a moment. His jaw dropped and he stared gormlessly at the wall opposite for a few seconds, before springing into action.

" _JACKIE!_ " he hollered, sprinting from the room he had been given but barely ever slept in. " _Jackie! Pete!_ It's the TARDIS!" He hammered on their bedroom door for a few seconds before bolting down the stairs and into the foyer of their manor.

"What are you banging on about now, Doctor?" came Jackie's very displeased voice as the couple came downstairs after him. "It's _three in the morning!_ " He didn't have it in him to _pretend_ to care.

"I sensed the _TARDIS_ , Jackie, it's - it's here. Somehow." Had Rose done something? Once again the thought of her left alone in the other universe made his stomach drop.

Jackie's eyes had gone wide. " _The TARDIS?_ But that means -"

"Rose."

The two stared at each other for a few seconds, before Pete huffed and asked, "Well what does that mean? Has she come back through? I thought the universes were permanently barred from each other."

He nodded frantically. "They are, but I can - I'm feeling her! At intervals, like she's trying to break through to me. There's a signal, trying to lead me somewhere -"

"To where?" Jackie cried, moving forwards and grabbing his hands in hers, clutching on. "Please, Doctor! Where's my little girl?"

He blinked at her for a few seconds, then said, "I - I think it's - Norway. The TARDIS - the signal's coming from Norway."

They stared at each other for a few seconds more, before Pete sighed and said, "Well we'd better get the Jeep packed up then."

* * *

On a beach in Norway was where the signal eventually came through. Waves crashed on the shore, the wind buffeted around her, and she failed to feel a bit of it. The Doctor was there, her mum at his side, and Pete stood by the car metres away. Rose had been right about one thing; she wasn't ready for this.

"How long's it been for you?" she asked.

"Four months," he said. "You?"

"About three, give or take…" Because she really wasn't sure. Time didn't exist in the TARDIS, and she had been nowhere else. "So what now? How do I - do I pull you through, or can I land where you are, somehow?"

His expression grew graver. "No. Physical passage isn't possible. This is as good as we'll get." Behind him, her mum let out a sob.

Her heart dropped like a stone. "Are - are you _sure?_ "

"I'm afraid so." He sounded almost defeated but she didn't know whether he looked it too, because she had hung her head, frustration almost bubbling over. In her months of research she had struggled to understand what seemed like the most basic concepts, but she had at least worked _this_ out. Or she thought she had.

"I -" Her jaw flapped uselessly for a few seconds and she was unable to speak due to the strain not breaking down in tears was putting on her throat. "I'm so sorry," she managed to get out.

"Oh, no, it wasn't _your_ fault." He looked like he wanted to reach out and hold her; his hands twitched at his sides.

She swallowed against the lump in her throat. "Bloody Torchwood."

He smiled sadly and nodded. "Bloody Torchwood."

"Oh, _sweetheart_ , please look after yourself," Jackie cried, finally stumbling right up to her image. "You look exhausted, please tell me you're sleeping."

She hadn't been, that much. "I will mum. _Am_. The TARDIS doesn't let me skip out on that sort of stuff." Not that much, anyway. "I love you."

"I love you too, baby," Jackie sniffled, and if Rose's heart hadn't broken enough over the last few months, it completely shattered in that moment. "So much. I'm -" Then came the blow Rose _wasn't_ expecting. "I'm pregnant, actually."

"You're _what?_ " And even as her heart broke further, she forced a smile to her face and said, "That's great! Took you long enough to give me a sibling." As Jackie let out her own watery laugh, Rose glanced past her at Pete, who stood off in the distance, and sighed minutely. Hopefully this kid would grow up with both parents.

"The connection won't last much longer," the Doctor interjected, voice gentle. "I couldn't tell you how much time we have, but seeing as this is it…"

"End of the road," Rose said, bottom lip trembling. "I - I _love you._ "

He nodded, smiling at her. "Quite right too. And I suppose…" He took in a deep, bracing breath. "If it's my last chance to say it…" She held her own. "Rose Tyler -"

The image vanished, and Rose was alone, in the TARDIS, with the hum of time and space her only consolation. A broken sob wrenched itself from her throat and she fell against the console where she stayed until she had cried herself dry again.

That was it. All that work, all that research, and she had _failed_.

Looking up and shaking all over, her eyes grazed the brown coat, which she had returned to its place over the coral strut a few days ago, and -

And then over the figure of the _golden, glowing bride_ , standing on the other side of the console. Her jaw dropped. She thought it was just a figure of speech to say a bride was glowing.

"What?"

The bride turned around, the glow fading away. _Her_ jaw dropped. " _What?_ " Rose shook her head, again without answers. "What the hell is this? _What is this place?_ "

"I - I don't -"

" _Where the hell am I?_ I'm supposed to be walking down the aisle! Oh, this has Nerys written all over it, that evil little witch! _I'll kill her!_ " The ginger woman was advancing on Rose rapidly, so she skittered back and away from her, head spinning madly. " _What's going on? Answer me! Ya year me, blondie? What's going on?_ "

"Wow, you - you say a lot of words, don't you," she said, catching herself just as she was about to say something monumentally rude.

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" the woman asked.

"Nothing - sorry, I - just, how did you get in here?" It was impossible. Point blank impossible. If her time with the Doctor hadn't taught her that, her studies of the TARDIS manual had only reinforced the point.

" _How did I get here?_ You kidnapped me, junkie!" she screeched, and Rose's jaw dropped further still.

" _Junkie?_ " Christ, she hadn't let herself go _that_ badly had she?

" _Get me to the church!_ "

"Fine!" she snapped, rearing up. "You want the church, I'll _give you_ the bloody church!" She stormed around the console to the monitor and asked, "What's the address?"

* * *

It didn't make sense. It was too weird, even for her. Something had to have happened to bring Donna into the TARDIS, though.

"Can I ask - did anything… I dunno, _weird_ happen in the runup to today?"

Donna screwed her nose up. "Nah, unless you count mum complimenting me this morning, or grandad catching influenza. _My_ fault, of course, if mum's word is law."

At the word "mum", Rose's heart had clenched, but at Donna's elaboration she narrowed her eyes. "Sounds lovely, your mum."

"Oh, don't get me started, I've been flying around all day." The woman marched off and Rose gaped some more before running to catch her.

" _Where are you going? Come back to the TARDIS!_ "

"I'm going to get a taxi, blondie, or don't you remember? _It's my wedding day,_ and you've already failed to get me back once!"

Rose huffed. "You wanna get a taxi? Fine! What money will you pay for one with?"

Donna ground her teeth and balled her fists. " _It's my wedding day!_ " she bellowed, and the thin crowds scattered around her. "You think they'd turn down a distressed woman in a wedding dress?"

"I think we're in the wrong part of the country to rely on the kindness of strangers!" she exclaimed. "This is _London!_ "

"Christ, my family must be going spare!" Donna cried.

"So call them!" Rose exclaimed. "Here, I've got a phone." And in her haste to get it to the woman she almost chucked it at her head.

Donna caught it with a half malevolent glare and got dialing. "Oh, they must be _so_ worried."

* * *

They weren't so worried, as it turned out. When they finally got where they were going - the reception venue, by that point, they were very noticeably _not_ worried.

"Everything was already paid for, and you just up and vanished," said the woman Donna's man Lance had been dancing with a minute ago.

"Yes, _thank you_ Nerys," Donna hissed.

Rose, feeling a surge of protectiveness wash over her, raised her eyebrows, looked the other blonde over and said, "Oh, _that's_ Nerys," in a tone that could only suggest to the woman that she had been a topic of discussion.

The woman gaped at her. "What does _that_ -"

"Shut up Nerys," Lance said, and Rose looked at him approvingly, until she remembered that until their arrival he had been singing and dancing and having a grand old time, not searching for his missing bride like any real man would do, and she decided she didn't like Lance.

As Donna showed off her acting chops to the gathered crowd and the party reignited, Rose trudged off to the corner and without anything else to do, she looked up HC Clements. From what she had whittled out of Donna on their way to the reception hall, the company were locksmiths. Nothing interesting about them. Nothing, nothing, nothing, no-

No.

 _Not them_.

"Torchwood," she hissed through her teeth, clenching her fist before slamming her hand palm down on the bar. " _Torchwood._ "

When everything went to hell minutes later and infuriatingly familiar robotic Santas ambushed the reception hall, Rose was forced back into action.

"We have to get everyone out!" she exclaimed, looking around for an answer and startling when no one answered her rallying cry - _because he wasn't there anymore_.

She dashed to the doorway and reached to pull the fire alarm - until she saw the approaching Santas and realised they were boxed in. What would the Doctor do? Something very clever and ultimately beyond her, she thought, and probably involving the sonic screwdriver, which she didn't have. She looked back to the fire alarm again, then to the ceiling, and wondered whether the Santas could be short circuited by _water_ …

* * *

If you were a big evil secret agency and you were doing evil things in the middle of one of Earth's busiest cities, how would you go about your business undetected? Whatever it was, she was close. Physically, at least. Mentally she worried that she was about as far away as she could be.

She looked at her two companions as she stood in the HC Clements building, and sighed. Donna wasn't too bad, but she really didn't like Lance. Didn't Donna say he'd proposed after six months?

Privately, she thought six months sounded a _teensy_ bit shotgun, but she knew a girl on the estate who'd gone on holiday to Vegas and come back married to a bull herder from Texas who called himself Rex McClean, so she'd said nothing.

"Right, you two, you've worked here long enough. Has anything ever gone on behind the scenes that your employers would have kept you from finding out about?"

"How are we supposed to know, _Sherlock?_ " Lance sniped. "If they were doing stuff in _secret_ , why would we know?"

"Oh, leave her alone, Lance," Donna said. "She's at least trying."

She looked at Lance for a long moment, then asked, "What did you say you do here?"

"I _didn't_ ," he said, beginning to glare.

"Works in personnel," Donna said, shrugging.

He shot her an affronted look. "Donna!"

"What?" the woman snapped. "At least she's trying to do something about this! What have _you_ done?"

"Apart from go on the piss when your bride-to-be vanished," Rose muttered and then Donna was glaring at her again.

"Leave him alone!"

 _For God's sake_. "Okay, well whatever's going on, it's probably going on from _here_ , right?"

She was talking more to herself than to them, but Donna still said, "Yeah, sure. So what?" at the same time as Lance asked, "What makes you think that?"

She addressed his question first in an outburst of frustration. " _Because I don't know where else to start, Lance!_ There's probably nothing I _can_ do, but I can at least try. Where Torchwood goes, disaster follows, and I'll follow _that_. It's all Torchwood, all the time." She almost snarled that last bit and forced herself to calm down before she turned back to Donna. "If it's all happening from here, then somewhere in this building, I'd guess we'll find the people responsible for making you disappear. I'd say you want a word with them, right?"

She asked the question to the couple and as Donna listed off the many choice words she would like to have with the people responsible for her "kidnapping", Rose watched as Lance shifted remained silent for about two seconds. Donna was so wrapped up in her own indignance (which Rose couldn't blame her for) that she never noticed Lance's hesitation. Rose did though. She had seen enough of the man to decide that he was involved somehow.

"Right, lets look see where we can get," she sighed, heading over to the nearest computer in sight and turning it on. "Can I have your ID info?" she asked, tapping her fingernails against the side of the monitor. "Lance's, preferably," she added as an afterthought.

" _Why mine?_ "

"His user ID's 4433204," Donna reeled off promptly, and even as Rose typed the numbers in her eyebrows shot up. Ignoring her fiance's indignant spluttering, she continued, "Password's WestHam55440192. Capital W capital H. Why Lance's?"

"He's higher up the food chain than you are," she explained. "Wider access to files." And if he was as involved as she suspected he may be, it would make sense for information about HC Clement's secret Torchwood link to be there.

* * *

With a key to the building's secret basement level procured by Rose from the office of Mr Clements himself, they were off, and she knew they were onto a winner. She'd seen the keys to a few alien ships in her time, and the key in Clement's office could be nothing _but_ alien. If she'd had the sonic it would have made her life far easier, and she thought for a moment about going looking for one of the Doctor's old ones when she was back on the TARDIS.

"Wonder why Clements wasn't in his office," Donna said on the way to the lift. "He doesn't normally take breaks at this time of day."

"It's _Christmas_ ," Lance said irritably, stalking after them. "He's probably at home, like we should be. Come on Donna, lets just forget all this and go home."

" _Go home?_ " she asked, sounding aghast. "We're supposed to be on our way to the airport for our honeymoon! Like hell I'm going home. I want _answers._ "

The ride down to their destination was spent in a stiff silence as Rose and Lance alternated between shooting distrustworthy looks at each other and staring straight ahead. She could barely wait for the day to be over. This was the most activity she had taken part in for… possibly _weeks_.

In the secret basement they found a mysterious lab - because _of course_ they did. Inside, and appearing rather prominent, was a strange device that Rose picked up and examined with interest.

"We shouldn't be here," Lance said. "Lets go."

"Shut up," she and Donna said in tandem, and Rose twisted the knob on the top of the device in one single, swift movement. A beaker full of water began to shimmer immediately and glow golden, bubbling away even as Rose's senses seemed to dim -

" _Turn it off!_ " came Donna's horrified shriek, and she span around to see the woman glowing as she had when she first arrived on the TARDIS. Jaw dropping, Rose turned the device stopped, and the glow went away. "What the _hell_ was that?"

"I -"

" _Why were we glowing?_ "

"Well you - _we?_ " Rose's heart seemed to stop beating. "What do you mean ' _we_ '?"

"I mean we as in both of us, missy!" Donna shouted. " _You_ , and _me_ , glowing _gold!_ "

" _What?_ "

She had glowed too? With golden particles like the ones from the TARDIS? Then, when a disembodied voice began taunting them from above and Lance scarpered, Rose's alarm only worsened.

Screwing up her courage and hoping for a much better success rate with this alien than she had had when confronting the Sycorax, she called out, "Where are you? I - I _demand_ that you show yourself!"

The raspy voice chuckled. "Oh, such false pretence. Who dares to speak to me in such a manner?"

"R-Rose Tyler," she said, barely stammering and trying to sound as commanding as possible. "A defender of the planet Earth. If you want it, you have to answer to _me._ " The Doctor was far better than she at all this tone-of-authority business.

She had no time to linger on this thought, however, because then, in a flash of blinding light, a creature teleported into the room, and -

" _What - is that?_ " Donna gasped, mouth gaping with horror.

Rose shook her head dumbly. "No idea." She had never seen anything like it before. It was - it was a _giant spider_.

The creature hissed, seemingly offended. "I am the _Empress of the Racnoss_ , ignorant child." Racnoss. She didn't think she'd ever heard the Doctor mention the race before.

"An Empress?" Rose asked. "Where's your army then?" She looked surreptitiously around the space, eyes narrowed at the shadows as if she would be able to spot tiny spiders crawling all over the place, like with Aragog in the Chamber of Secrets. "Waiting - wherever you just came from? Where've you been hiding? Where are you from?"

"So many questions," the Empress chuckled, front legs waving around as she expressed her amusement. Rose's skin crawled and she had to force herself not to step back; aliens she could handle, but anything along the lines of _giant spider_ was a no-no. "Where am I from, child? I'm from _here_."

"What?" Donna gasped. "What does she mean, Rose? How's she from here? Does she mean Earth?" Rose could only shake her head, aghast, but the Racnoss answered for her.

"I have been waiting for this day for many a millenia, in hibernation beneath the Earth's crust." Maybe that explained the gigantic hole in the ground. She must have dug her way up. But how did Torchwood come to be involved? Unless…

"Was your hibernation interrupted?" she asked. "Did Torchwood's drilling wake you up?" Her responding sneer was answer enough, and Rose huffed. _Fucking Torchwood._

"Silly human," she hissed. "I have been here from the very beginning. My homeworld was lost to war, and I fled to the edge of the universe."

"So you've been hiding at the centre of Earth for thousands of years," she said. "Doesn't that - doesn't that go against the laws of the… Shadow Proclamation?" _God_ , she hoped it did.

The Empress cackled. " _The Shadow Proclamation_ ," the creature sneered, and then spat on the floor to show Rose just what she thought of the threat. "What rule do they have over me, when I have been here since _before the beginning?_ " _What did that mean?_

"How can you have been here since _before_ the beginning of Earth?" Rose's head was spinning with possibilities, and she tried to reason it out. The only thing she could think of was that the Empress had been there since before the Earth had even formed, and then - what? Burrowed her way to the centre? Or had the planet formed around her? "That would mean you'd been hibernating for - billions of years!"

"Indeed, child," the Empress said. "And now I am awake."

"And what about _me?_ " Donna demanded, stepping forwards, and Rose almost jumped, having momentarily forgotten she was there. Somehow. "What did you do to me? How did you make me glow? _Oi, look at me, lady!_ I'm _talking_ to you. Where do I fit into all this?"

"The bride is so feisty," crowed the Empress mockingly. Behind the spider, Rose saw Lance appear, an axe in his hands, and she froze.

Donna seemed not to have noticed. "Yeah, I am, and I don't know what _you_ are, but a spider's just a spider, and an axe is an axe! _Now_ ," she shouted to Lance, who was swinging back, "do it!" So she _had_ noticed him. Donna was a good actress.

Rose held her breath as the man seemed to follow through with the instruction, before both he and spider froze in place - then began to laugh in tandem. Rose then sighed as Donna's head whipped back and forth between the two of them, confusion marring her features, and moved into a more protective stance in front of the woman.

"That was a good one," Lance laughed. "Your _face!_ "

"Lance is funny," the Empress agreed.

"What?" Donna's gusto had fled from her voice, and she just looked lost. Rose felt anger start to bubble in her veins and she balled her fists up, glaring at the laughing duo. "What? Lance, don't be stupid. _Get her!_ "

"God, she's thick," Lance groaned, looking for all the world like he was the victim in the situation. "Months, I've had to put up with her. _Months_. A woman who can't even point to _Germany on a map._ "

* * *

Rose's brain had raced as the confrontation continued, trying to think of a way to get herself and Donna out alive. _Think, think, think!_

"You were _poisoning me?_ But we were getting married," Donna said, sounding truly and utterly heartbroken, and any other time, Rose would have been acting as the woman's support, but in the moment she was far too busy…

The particles from the TARDIS were what caused Donna to be pulled inside, yeah? She didn't know for certain, but she would bet money on it.

"All we need is _you_ , Donna."

The strange device she had found in the basement had made those cells reactivate, hadn't it? And if what Donna said was anything to go by, some of them lingered in Rose as well. They were still there, and they still had pull. So what if they could work in reverse?

"Kill the blonde!"

" _No!_ No, I won't let you!" Donna had thrown herself in front of Rose, who looked around rapidly before coming to a decision.

"Don't worry, Donna," she said, fingering the device which sat in her coat pocket and then drawing it out. "They missed something."

" _At arms!_ " the Empress cried, not paying Rose any attention, so worked up in vigour was she. "Take aim!"

Without waiting for another word out of the Empress' mouth, she grit her teeth and twisted the knob on the device in the opposite direction - and breathed an immense sigh of relief as the TARDIS materialised around she and Donna.

"Thank God that worked," she said, feeling breathless despite her lack of physical activity. "Imagine getting killed by Aragog's bitchy aunt."

"But what did you _do?_ " Donna asked, sounding breathless herself.

"Well those golden particles that brought you into the TARDIS were activated by this thing in the lab earlier," she explained, holding up the device. "I took a chance and hoped that if we used it in reverse, it'd bring the TARDIS to _us_ , which it did." She took a moment to lean against the console and breathe. The ship hummed at her in what she interpreted as a positive manner, and outside the Empress raged.

Then she stood straight again and sighed deeply, and Donna watched as she walked around to look at the monitor in lieu of something more effective to do. She had succeeded in getting Donna out, but there was still a gigantic spider creature outside that needed to be dealt with somehow.

"That puts the wedding in perspective," Donna sighed. "Lance was right; we are nothing."

There was a five second pause as she took Donna's words in, then she said, "Right, from now on, lets not start any sentences with the words 'Lance was right'," because she may not have been best mates with the woman, but the bastard had betrayed her trust in one of the worst ways possible, and Rose had, to her own surprise, become rather attached to her.

As long as she didn't call her a junkie again.

"Besides," she continued, "it's things like weddings that make life worth living! Never mind alien spiders hibernating at the centre of the Earth for millions of years, give me a good celebration of love any day."

"Celebration of love," Donna snorted, crossing her arms. Rose's heart twisted. It had been doing that a lot lately. "I still don't understand that golden stuff though. I'm chock full of it, but what's it _for?_ "

Rose swallowed. _The Doctor would have known_. "I don't know." She stared at the blank screen of the monitor and begged for answers from above. Those particles had made up the heart of the TARDIS, but they were _dangerous_ , so what did the Racnoss want with them? "I… think they need them for something. It's in this ship too, and it's really powerful and inside _you_ \- and me, a little bit. So if Lance was poisoning you with them it means they need them in a host, to use them to - Donna?" She was being awfully quiet -

Rose looked up, and Donna was nowhere in sight.

" _Damn it!_ "

* * *

Donna could do nothing more than watch in horror as the Empress lost her patience with Lance and severed his ties, and the man who had manipulated her, lied to her, _poisoned her_ \- who she had loved, once, fell into the depths of the endless hole below.

" _Lance!_ "

"Harvest the humans!" The Empress continued to boom out her commands as Donna struggled to free span her head around, only to lock eyes on Rose, who was - _climbing across to her over the webbing? What?_

"Gymnast. Stronger than I look," Rose panted, coming to rest at Donna's side where she dug her feet into the webbing, clung on with one hand, and began to hack at her restraints with a knife. "When I'm done, swing to safety with this." She freed one of Donna's arms and cut loose a long strand of web just in front of them.

Donna grappled for it and clung on for dear life. "I'll fall," she whimpered.

"Of course you won't," Rose said, privately agreeing that that may indeed be the end result. She had to try though. _She had to._ When most of Donna's body was free and beginning to sag down from the ceiling, she asked, "Ready?"

" _NO!_ "

"Good. Off you go!" And making sure that Donna was holding on properly to the web-rope, she eased her body away from the ceiling completely, and Donna was swinging off, _over the hole_ -

Where she crashed full body into the wall opposite and dropped to the floor. Rose winced and, feeling the webbing holding her straining body up starting to give, dug herself in deeper as the Empress raged at being deceived, and cut herself a strand loose.

"No time like the present," she muttered to herself as her arms and legs began to shake violently. She wrapped the strand around her free wrist three times, then with one great, deep breath let herself go.

Her stomach dropped and she _screamed_ as she cleared the Racnoss hole herself, letting go once she was over the ground again so as to avoid the same fate as Donna, who looked like she couldn't decide whether to be glad to be alive or angry at Rose's method of rescue. Well, it worked.

The next couple of minutes passed in a blur, as Rose implored the Empress to stand down, to leave Earth alone and was promptly turned down. She revealed further the details of her adventure before going to rescue Donna, about finding the control to the robots - who now worked for her - and finally withdrew a few of the deadly decorations that had been planted to attack Donna's reception.

With a grim sigh, she detonated them and revealed to Donna, "While we were back on the TARDIS I did a scan of the area, and guess what? Right below the Thames barrier."

Ultimately, had Donna not been there, Rose might not have made it out of that cavern alive. The older woman had latched onto her and dragged her outside, and they came out onto the Thames barrier just in time to see a ship that could have only been the Racnoss' get shot down from the sky.


	4. Tyler & Jones

**AN: I love stories where Rose and the TARDIS get close to each other, able to properly communicate and so forth, but I don't like how often times it just** _ **happens**_ **. Thus, in my story, it will be a process. On another note, certain story lines that heavily depend on the Doctor being** _ **the Doctor**_ **won't be written in this story - at least not** _ **yet**_ **… Thanks for reading!**

* * *

She took Donna back to her home sharpish after that.

Watching the woman trudge to the door and outside, Rose took a breath before following her out. They had landed on the path of a suburban street. Donna had crossed her arms and was visibly trying not to look scared as she observed the ship from the outside, all the adrenaline from earlier now gone and allowing her to better take it in.

"It's really bigger on the inside," she muttered. "Is it alien?"

Rose nodded. "Yeah."

"Are you?"

For a second, she was reminded of the day she met the Doctor. "No, not me." She thought about how she had apparently glowed when in the lab and almost second guessed herself, but said nothing. "Is that okay?"

Donna shrugged. "I suppose so. You saved my life today."

"I suppose so." Rose looked at her closely. "Are _you_ gonna be okay?" After all, the woman had been "kidnapped", betrayed and sort-of-widowed in the same day.

"Yeah," she said in a low tone. "I mean - I don't know. Maybe I'll go traveling!" she said, brightening artificially. "Actually see some of the world." Rose thought for a moment, in the back of her head, that the Doctor might have invited the woman to travel with him. Rose didn't think she could.

"I hope you do," she said. "There's a lot to see."

"Yeah." Then it was Rose's turn to feel x-rayed, as the older woman turned a critical eye on her. She resisted the urge to fidget. "So how about it then, sweetheart?" she asked in a soft voice. "Fancy coming in for a bit? Christmas dinner?"

Rose's eyes widened. "Oh, I couldn't -"

"It's just, you look lonely." At that, tears stung at the backs of her eyes. "Whatever I think of Christmas, no one should spend it alone." Donna shot her a friendly smile. "Fancy it? There's - there's an empty seat at the table now." Her own expression turned downcast again and Rose felt urged to stop it.

"I don't know - I mean I'd like to," she stammered, "but I've just lost -" She cut herself off and took a deep, steadying breath. "I just lost someone too."

Donna nodded. "Yeah? Who were they?"

Rose glanced up at the dark night sky and breathed in the air. "His name was the Doctor."

* * *

" _If you ever need to, come find me._ "

Those were the words Sarah Jane Smith had spoken on the day they met, and even if the context behind them was different to her situation, Rose, next found herself piloting the TARDIS to Bannerman Road and the time-spaceship, bless her, stepped in to lend a hand, landing her right in the driveway.

A pretty green vintage car sat next to her and Rose had barely a second to stare at it with a touch of longing before the front door was thrown open and a familiar face - and how _welcome_ a familiar face - came dashing out.

Rose tensed for a moment - a small wave of shame washing over her as she remembered the way her first meeting with Sarah Jane Smith had started - then relaxed and managed a small smile as the woman's eyes landed first on the TARDIS, then on her.

A smile broke out on Sarah Jane's face. "Rose! Oh, it's lovely to see you again dear, although - have you been looking after yourself?" She had reached out as if to hug her, but had instead grasped her shoulders and was assessing her through narrowed eyes. "You look far too tired. He hasn't been keeping you from sleep with all his dashing about, has he?"

A shot of pain went through her heart. "No, he hasn't."

The smile on Sarah Jane's face froze, then dropped slightly. "Well where is he then?" she asked in a falsely optimistic tone, turning back to the TARDIS. "Hiding from me?"

She swallowed. "No - no he's not. He's -" She broke off and sucked in a harsh breath. "He's _gone_ , Sarah."

The woman's face paled dramatically. "What on Earth do you mean, Rose? Gone? Gone where?"

And so, feeling terribly sick again, she explained. Everything, from the army of ghosts who turned out to be Cybermen, and the Cult of Skaro and the Genesis Ark, and Torchwood's messing with the void. She told her about the Doctor's plan to save the day and about how, at the last moment, it had all gone wrong and how he had been ripped away from his own universe.

"The walls between the universes have all been closed off again," she said, drawing to a close. "I managed to get through to him again, but only enough to talk. He said himself that he can never come back."

Sarah Jane was silent for a solid minute, lips pressed into a thin line, and a part of Rose wondered whether the woman was going to blame _her_ , tell her that it should have been Rose who got trapped - at which, she would agree - when instead she let out a watery sigh, stepped forwards, and wrapped her arms around Rose tightly, rubbing a hand up and down her back even as she felt Sarah Jane shaking.

"Oh, my dear, Rose," she muttered. "Come inside. Come inside."

She picked up the rucksack she had brought out of the TARDIS with her and allowed Sarah Jane to usher her into the warmth of her home, standing awkwardly in the small foyer until she was brought into the hallway.

"I'll make some tea," she said, muttering to herself more than Rose, before she turned to her with a look in her eyes so hollow that Rose almost winced. "You go into the living room, dear, just behind you. How do you take your tea?"

"Uh - milk and one sugar, thanks," she said, managing a weak smile, and as Sarah Jane disappeared into her kitchen she sloped into the living room.

Looking around the warm space, she felt a sort of tension drain from her shoulders that hadn't left her in months. Maybe it was the safe familiarity of being with a friend, someone she had known _before_ and whom she trusted, but Rose instinctively let her guard down. She felt a bit like a schoolgirl again when she slipped the rucksack off her shoulders and placed it on the floor beside the sofa with a _clunk_.

It was filled with books from the TARDIS library. One was the TARDIS manual - easily the heaviest of the lot - and she had also brought with her a volume detailing the laws and regulations of the Shadow Proclamation; if she was going to keep invoking them at her enemies, she should probably know a law or two. Finally, a binder that she had put together herself filled with printouts from the TARDIS, of the various alien lifeforms that the Doctor had pissed off over his long life, and who she may have to keep an eye out for.

She wasn't really sure why she brought them out with her, but it made her feel better to have them right there, within her immediate reach, to answer any question that may arise. She also wasn't sure she was doing the right thing by coming to relieve her burden on Sarah Jane. The look on her face had been so defeated when she went off to the kitchen that Rose could have kicked herself. Maybe it would have been better off if Sarah Jane had never found out. What if-

"Here we go," the woman on her mind said, coming into the living room with two cups of tea. She passed Rose the one patterned with little terrier dogs and sat down opposite her. For a good five minutes after that neither of them spoke, because despite the tentative friendship they had forged, it wasn't strong enough to properly withstand something like the loss of the Doctor. Neither of them knew what to say.

"You'll stay here tonight," Sarah Jane said suddenly, and Rose blinked at her a couple of times. "I have a spare room you can take, and my son's out at his friend's house right now but he shouldn't make too much noise coming in, so I don't think he'll wake you."

"Oh, I couldn't -"

"You can and you will," she said firmly. "You shouldn't be alone right now." Rose didn't want her to know that she had spent about three months completely isolated from the universe until the day before, so she kept quiet. "I'll bring you some pyjamas. Settle in."

* * *

The next morning, after a night during which she managed to sleep surprisingly well, Rose awoke with a small gasp (because deep sleep didn't mean _dreamless_ sleep) and looked around dazedly, eyebrows furrowed until she remembered where she was.

"Who's Mr Smith?" she asked, following her up the stairs to the attic. Sarah Jane didn't answer, just pushed the attic door open and entered. She left it open as an invitation for Rose to follow, which she did.

"We can talk in here," she said. "I don't want Luke to overhear any of this." Luke was her adopted son, who Rose had met briefly when he wandered into the kitchen earlier, yawning gormlessly and groping about for cereal.

"Actually, Sarah Jane," a disembodied voice said out of nowhere, "there's something you should hear about."

"Oh really?" she asked. "Lets hear it then. Mr Smith, I need you."

There was a loud clicking sound, and then -

Rose gaped as the supercomputer emerged from the wall and greeted Sarah Jane, then offered a hello to Rose, whose stammered return went ignored as it - he? - then said, "Sarah Jane, I have detected alien plasma coils coming from the centre of London."

"Really?" the woman asked, frowning even as Rose's spine straightened and the familiar call to action tugged in her stomach. "Tell me more."

A map diagnostic appeared on the screen as Mr Smith said, "This is the Royal Hope Hospital. Something appears to be going on there, though I don't believe anything disastrous has happened yet."

Rose and Sarah Jane exchanged a look before Rose said, "I'll go and take a look, if you like. It's been a while." And after her adventure with Donna, Rose had to admit that she was more than ready to heed the call of action again.

* * *

Sarah Jane's number had been saved onto her phone along with a dozen or so reminders (read: warnings) for Rose to keep her updated on whatever was happening at the hospital.

"The moment you think you need it, call me and I'll come in to help," she had said as Rose dashed about getting ready. "I'd contact UNIT, but they're a little trigger happy for my tastes these days."

She had almost taken the TARDIS, but her piloting skills still weren't exactly solid and she didn't want to risk overshooting, by either time or place. Getting it right wasn't as easy as it sounded, though she would never tell the Doctor that -

Lips pursing where she sat in the passenger seat of Sarah Jane's car, Rose cut off her thoughts and stared out of the window, trying to distract herself. She had been far too drained the previous night to look into much, beyond some skimming through of the book on the Shadow Proclamation, but her list of questions was growing more by the second. First and foremost, what were those golden particles inside Donna? And, she reminded herself, in _her too_.

Sarah Jane dropped her off at the Royal Hope with one more warning to keep in contact and to keep herself safe, and then with a couple more assurances, Rose was off. Whatever was going on, she was sure she could handle it. (Or so she told herself.)

While wandering the long, sterile hallways, claiming to be looking for her sick aunt's ward whenever a member of staff stopped her - because _mother_ was still too raw - it happened. A great rumbling, followed by an ear-splitting sound, and amongst the screams of the people around her, Rose watched with disbelief as the rain outside began to run on the opposite direction.

Then, she realised, it wasn't the _rain_ that was the problem. It was the hospital. They were being moved by something - literally ripped from the foundations of the building and _moved_. The world moved in a blur that she quickly had no hopes of tracking, before all of a sudden, almost as soon as it had started, they stopped. And they were looking down at another planet. _Earth_. They had been taken away from Earth completely.

"Oh my God," she muttered, trying not to gape. _What the hell was going on?_ Fumbling for her phone, she skipped right past the two voicemails from Sarah Jane and redialed her number straight away.

She picked up immediately. " _Rose?_ " Universal roaming was heaven-sent. " _Rose, can you hear me? What on Earth's going on?_ "

"Not on Earth," she said, looking out the window again. "I think we're on the moon."

As behind her, a woman moaned with fear, Sarah Jane asked, " _What? You're where?_ "

"We're on the moon, Sarah Jane," she said with more clarity. "Something's moved us to the moon."

To the woman's credit, she didn't remain hung up on the factoid for long. " _Well, obviously I'm of no help to you now. I might contact UNIT after all though. Go back home, see if Mr Smith can offer any help and get back to you_." The decisiveness in her voice made Rose's head clear.

She loved Sarah Jane Smith. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. Sounds like a plan. I'll see what I can do from here."

" _Stay in contact_ ," she said sharply, before Rose hung up and turned back to the room.

The people close by had clearly been listening in, but luckily they were too stunned to ask questions, and she didn't stick around long enough for them to think of any. Post-haste, she was in the floor's waiting room, where patients, visitors and medical staff were all gathered together. Doctors, nurses and student doctors alike continued to do their jobs even in the circumstances, though in one case, a _student_ was hyperventilating, and being assisted by a visitor wearing a poodle t-shirt.

"I bet it's extra-terrestrial," a young American man was saying to anyone who would listen. When he saw Rose watching him, he leaned in towards her. "All this stuff that's been going on in Britain recently? Has to be aliens! And earlier, I saw these two guys in motorcycle gear walking around." His tone turned conspiratory. "They seemed shifty to me. I'd bet money on them being involved."

"Look, mate, I don't know what's going on, but I doubt it's anything to do with a biker gang," she said, trying not to show her irritation as she looked about, trying to draw inspiration from _somewhere_.

He huffed and muttered something to himself that sounded like, "Normals," and Rose couldn't help but grin a bit. He was certainly passionate.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Joshua Bautista," he said. "You?"

"I'm Rose." Still bereft of ideas, she asked, "So what are you in here for?"

He blushed and said, "Oh, well see, I do a show with my friend where I go looking for supernatural elements -"

"You're a ghost hunter," she said. Brilliant.

"I take it you're not a believer," he said gamely.

She thought back to Christmas with Dickens and _him_ , and said, "Not exactly, mate."

"That's fine," he said. "My friend isn't either, who I make the show with. I'm used to you sceptics."

At that, Rose had to smile. "Well as long as you love it -"

"Oh, I don't," he said, expression deadly serious. "It's completely nerve destroying. I'm only in here because we came to England to film some episodes and I got hurt." He held up his bandaged arm to demonstrate.

She frowned. "What happened?"

"My friend scared me to death," he said, glowering at nothing. "Left me to walk through an _infamously haunted basement_ _alone_ , and then sent someone who worked there to 'check on me'. I freaked and fell over a bucket and sprained my wrist. He thinks it's hilarious."

"Sounds nice, your mate," she said wryly.

"Oh he is!" Josh said emphatically. "I love him. But he's a dick."

She was wasting time. "Yeah, well you stay here and rest your wrist," she said. "I'm off to find out what's going on."

As she walked away, Josh called after her, "It's aliens! I'll let money on it!"

When she came across a room with a balcony one floor up from where she had been, her uncertainty returned as she inched her way closer to the double doors. Resting in the Earthlight, she took a deep breath, and looked around as best she could without going outside.

If the gravity wasn't already gone, she doubted it was going to go at the opening of one window. Even so, she was extremely hesitant. A young woman with a white coat and a no-nonsense expression on her fairly dark-skinned face approached her where she stood by the window, and placed a hand on her arm.

"Miss, are you okay? I'm Doctor Martha Jones, I'm going around checking on people. Do you feel alright? Perhaps you might want to sit down."

Rose turned to face her properly and smiled. "I think I'm okay, thanks. Just… taking in the sights." No matter how many years she traveled, how many planets she saw, there would never be any sight more heartening to her than that of her own planet.

Dr Jones - Martha - let out a breathless laugh (though not _literally_ breathless, thank God). "It's certainly… spectacular." The woman looked at her speculatively. "Are you sure you're okay, Miss…?"

"Tyler," she said quickly. "Rose Tyler. And yeah, I'm fine. Really. It's gorgeous."

"It is."

The two of them stood looking out the balcony doors, for some seconds more before out of nowhere, Rose balled up her courage and asked, "Wanna take a closer look?" Before Martha could so much as blink, she had stepped forwards and opened one of the doors.

"Careful!" she cried, before she realised they were still breathing and she gasped minutely.

"It's interesting," Rose muttered, eyes narrowing as she stepped out onto the balcony and looked around. They really, truly, were on the moon.

"We're on the moon." She turned to see that she had been joined by Martha. Her eyebrows rose up and Martha, catching the look, said, "As long as we're trapped here, anyone under the hospital's care is my responsibility. I won't let you go anywhere alone."

"That and you wanted a closer look at the moon," Rose teased gently, and Martha grinned sheepishly before turning back to the landscape.

"I can't believe what I'm looking at."

"Well, believe it," she said quietly, searching around for some answer as to how they were all still breathing. She took in a deep breath, as if that would give her an answer.

"How are we breathing?" Martha asked, more to herself than to Rose, but she still shrugged and said, "Dunno. Want to find out though."

The only thing she could conjure up in her mind was the mental image of a dome sealing the air inside, and so despite feeling a bit silly doing so, she searched around for something solid and found a smallish rock. Plucking it up, she threw it full pelt away from herself and felt a jolt of victory as it seemed to hit an invisible wall and drop to the moon surface.

"Air bubble," she said, trying to sound confident enough to inspire it in her companion friend. "The air's been sealed in with us."

Martha, still rather wide-eyed, nodded slowly, then seemed to think it over before her eyes widened. "Does that mean it's all the air we've got?" Rose began to nod, then froze. _Oh no_. "What happens when we run out?"

Throat dry, she managed to get out, "What do you think?"

"Oh God," Martha said, looking sick. "We have to do something!"

Something in her voice made Rose snap out of her own horror and she nodded decisively. "Of course we do. So, lets get started. Come on." And not waiting for a response, she turned and headed back inside.

* * *

"I mean, it has to be extra-terrestrial," Martha was saying from where she followed behind Rose. "That spaceship at Christmas, and that other one that crashed into Big Ben? Aliens. Definitely."

Rose was torn between agreeing with her and the thrill of shock that shot up her spine as she was reminded of the young American man who had said almost the same thing - and who had also suspected two men in biker gear. A lump stuck in her throat as she subtly began looking around for the duo in the crowds of terrified people.

"What do you think?" Martha asked, catching up so she was walking alongside Rose.

Momentarily distracted, she nodded. "Oh, I'd definitely say aliens."

The question was, which ones? Had she met them before, perhaps? Or as the very least heard of them, because her encounter with the Racnoss would had been easier to handle had she had any idea of what a Racnoss was, prior to her first meeting with their Empress.

Before she could say or do any more, however, her question was answered for her by the arrival of creatures dressed in bizarre military-style uniform. The look of the uniform and the odd helmet shape gave Rose a jolt of familiarity. Hadn't she seen sketches similar to this in the book she was studying on the Shadow Proclamation? Then the leading alien took off his helmet and the word hit her like a hammer.

"Those are aliens," she heard Martha exclaim. " _Aliens!_ "

"Judoon," she said, eyes widening. Didn't they work for the Shadow Proclamation?

"What did you just say?" Martha asked, eyeing her incredulously.

"Judoon," Rose repeated, not looking away from the aliens standing amongst the terrified humans. "That's what they're called."

Martha laughed. "Oh, what, like you're an expert?" At Rose's serious look, her own began to mirror it. "Seriously?"

"Seriously. Got the time machine to prove it and everything."

One of the Judoon said, "Blos so folt do no cro blo cos so ro." Rose frowned; was the TARDIS failing to translate because of the distance between them?

A medical student wearing a coat similar to Martha's approached the Judoon then, trembling from head to foot, and said, "We - we welcome you in peace. We mean you n-no harm." His attempts at bridge building were cut off when the alien grabbed hold of him and shoved him into the wall, scanning him with a handheld device. Rose had jumped forwards to intervene as the young man - boy, really - whimpered, "Please don't hurt me! I was only trying to help."

It seemed her intervention wasn't needed however, as the Judoon moved away and then said in English, "Language assimilated. Designation Earth English. You will be assimilated." He drew a cross on the boy's hand and that was that. "Catalogue all suspects."

At that, a jolt of panic shot through Rose, who wasn't sure that her weak link to the TARDIS wouldn't make her show up as something alien, or even those golden particles that she had shared with Donna.

She wasn't going to stick around to find out. "Right, well, I'm off," she said before the Judoon stomping through the hallway could so much as spot her. Turning on her heel, she went back the way she had come.

"Okay," Martha said, having watched the display with keen interest. She was following Rose, and turned to her to say, "You obviously have some idea of what's going on. Start talking. You said they're called Judoon."

"They are," Rose said, nodding. "They work for the Shadow Proclamation. Like uh - I dunno, thugs for hire, but in space."

"And the Shadow Proclamation is?"

"Space police."

"Space police, right," Martha said, nodding whilst smiling in a way that told Rose she still didn't believe a word she was saying.

Feeling her temper shorten now the pressure to act was on, she clenched her fists and kept walking, getting as far away from the aliens as she could. She didn't know much about them, but she knew enough to know they weren't _friendly_.

"So they brought us here then? These Judoon?" Martha asked, following her for the moment.

"I think so," she said, nodding. "Like I said, they work for the Shadow Proclamation - space police - so they must be after someone. A criminal, maybe, who's hiding in the hospital, but they had to bring us away from Earth because the planet's protected. The moon isn't."

Martha's expression hardened. "Does that mean we're under arrest?"

"I don't think so," Rose said, "but it doesn't mean the Judoon are on _our_ side. We're in danger from more than one front."

"So what do we do?" Martha asked, and if she weren't in the middle of something, she would have stopped to marvel at the woman's guts.

"We have to search the hospital and find this criminal," she said. "Before we run out of time."

* * *

"What exactly are we looking for?" Martha asked, beginning to sound frustrated as they walked inconspicuously past room after room.

Rose sighed and shrugged. "It's hard to say. If they're hiding on an Earth hospital they probably look human, so they could be anyone, but Mr Sm- my source, the person who told me something seemed to be going on here, he said weird signals - these plasma coil things - had been coming from the hospital for two days, so maybe we could narrow it down to people who checked in then."

"Plasma coils?" Martha repeated. "What're they when they're at home?"

"I don't know," Rose admitted, the small high of relief that came with recognising the Judoon fading fast. "Either the criminal or the Judoon themselves. Has anyone with weird symptoms been checked in recently?"

It was Martha's turn to say, "I don't know," and then stop suddenly, as if she had been struck by a great idea. "We could ask Mr Stoker! He deals with special cases sometimes. Come on!"

Rose followed her to an office another floor up, and tried to look past her inside as she threw the door open and shouted, "Mr Stoker! We need -"

She stopped dead, but before Rose had the chance to ask her what was wrong, an old, creaking voice cried, " _Kill her!_ " and she was grabbing Martha by the hand, pulling her away from the office and running for their lives.

They were being pursued by two men dressed head to toe in - _damn it_ , she owed Josh Bautista an apology - head to toe in motorcycle gear. Helmets and everything, and if they were working for the criminal the Judoon were after, she would bet they weren't human either.

"Did you get a look at her?" she asked Martha as they skidded into a stairwell and started up it.

"Yeah," Martha panted, trailing behind her just a bit. "She's this old woman!"

"Not really an old woman," she said.

"She had a straw!" Martha continued as they heard the doors directly above them crash open and they diverted to hide in a janitor's closet. "She was sucking his blood with it," Martha continued in a hushed whisper.

Rose raised her eyebrows. "A vampire?" Were there such things as vampires? Alien vampires? She supposed that if alien werewolves were a thing, vampires weren't too much of a stretch. "An alien vampire bothering to drink someone's blood when she's supposed to be hiding…" she mused quietly. "Weird time to stop for dinner, isn't it?"

"Maybe she needs it to be sustained," Martha suggested. "She might have had to stop."

"Or she's doing it for some other reason." _But what?_

There was no time to figure that out, because apparently they hadn't been as quiet as they thought - or the motorbike guys had better hearing than she thought - because with a terrifying crash! someone began trying to break open the door to their hiding place.

She and Martha let out synchronised shrieks of shock before her companion asked, " _What do we do?_ "

"I dunno!" They wouldn't be able to dodge around it would they? At least not both of them. She was looking around for an idea but didn't see anything that could knock the - wait. Was that a broom back there?

She rushed forwards to grab it and aimed it at the door just as Martha gasped again - this time one of inspiration. The woman was a doctor-to-be for a reason. She was smart; having spotted a tub of strong cleaning fluids, she was rifling through it, looking at bottles and putting them back, before she settled on one containing a clear liquid, with a skull and crossbones on the label. Something corrosive.

As the wood of the door splintered, they stopped to observe each other's chosen weapons and Rose felt optimistic. "You hit it with that stuff," she said, "and while he's distracted I'll knock him down."

Martha nodded. "And then?"

"Then we run for it."

"That's _it?_ "

"You got anything better?" she cried, but before their talk could escalate the wood gave and the door splintered everywhere - and one of the bikers stood in the doorway.

Not missing a beat, Martha ripped the lid from the bottle of acid and threw it over the alien man, who went stumbling back but didn't make a _single_ noise as the acid ate away at his suit… and then continued eating and eating and _eating_ , though it never reached his skin.

Eyes wide, Rose stepped forwards and hit him with the handle end of the broom, and he fell to the floor with a dull thud, as finally, the acid ate right the way through him, and he was left with a hole right through his chest. She could see the floor beneath him.

"Oh my God," Martha cried, hand going to her mouth. "I killed him! I killed a man."

Heart hammering, Rose knelt down beside the body and, being careful not to touch any acid herself, removed the helmet. Beneath was a perfectly round, black stub. Frowning, she reached out to touch it.

"Feels like leather," she said.

"What the hell?" Martha asked, joining her on the floor. "What is it?"

"Dunno," she said, doing her best to examine the rest of the body. "I think it's _leather_. All the way through. A creature made of _solid leather_. It was probably never alive to start with. Just a puppet for that old lady's convenience." She looked up at Martha, who still looked wracked with horror. "I don't think you've killed anyone. If we don't hurry up though, everyone in this hospital's gonna die."

* * *

People were beginning to slump to the floor as she and Martha left the stairwell and marched down the hallway. Patients, visitors and medical staff alike, some connected to oxygen tanks, lined their path as they moved towards the waiting room on their floor.

By this point, Rose was well past panic but it seemed as if, from the things people around her were saying, the Judoon had passed through this floor already and had moved on, so at least she didn't have to worry about that. And thanks to Martha she knew they were looking for an old woman, though not _which_ woman - but then Martha would recognise her, wouldn't she?

"We have to think of something," Martha said, worried eyes locked on the people around her. She looked back at Rose. "You got anything?"

"Not yet," she muttered regretfully, looking around. "I -" She had been looking around the waiting room and just as she spoke, her eyes landed on someone familiar. "Josh!" she called, running across the room to him where he sat in the same place she had left him, still sharing his theories on the situation to anyone who would listen.

He looked up at her shout and surprise appeared on his face. "Rose, right?" he asked. "Hey."

"Listen, have you seen those bikers recently? As in, in the last couple of minutes? One might have been with an old woman. It's her we're looking for."

Josh blinked. "Uh - what? I mean yeah, they came this way like, two minutes ago. Why?"

"Where did they go?" she asked. "It's important."

"MRI room, I think," he said, frowning and glancing out of the door he sat right next to. At the end of the hallway through it sat the room in question.

"Thanks," she said, dashing off again with Martha hot on her heels.

He called after her, " _Wait!_ Was I right? Is it the motorcycle gang?" She didn't stop to answer. If they all survived this he could question her til kingdom come. Right now, she had to concentrate.

"Why would they go to the MRI room?" she asked, both to herself and Martha, and then, just to Martha, "What exactly _is_ an MRI room? What goes on in there?"

"Magnetic resonance imaging," Martha said. "We use them to take pictures of a patient's innards. Their brain, heart, etcetera."

Rose nodded. "Right. Still doesn't explain why this old woman would hide in there." She nodded down to the room at the end of the long hallway, just as the door behind them banged open - and they turned to see one of the "bikers" storming towards them. He had a hole burned right through his chest. " _Run!_ "

And run they did. Turning off before they could reach the MRI room, they ran to the closest stairwell and straight up, looking for the nearest Judoon. Hopefully they would recognise something non-human when they saw the gaping hole burnt through the chest of the thing following them, and through that they could lead them to the old woman.

"Okay, think," she called to Martha as they sprinted. "This old woman, who looks human but isn't, was drinking Mr Stoker's blood when she should have been doing everything she could to stay undercover. Why?"

"Because she needs to?" Martha suggested again.

She nodded. "Yeah, maybe she needed it - like it keeps her looking human or something."

"You mean like a shapeshifter?"

"Could be!" It made more sense than space vampire, at least.

Bursting out of the first door they came to, they ran straight out and into the back of a Judoon, who turned sharply to face them. Rose gaped up at it.

"Hostility detected," the Judoon said in its droning, almost robotic voice. "Punishment -"

"No!" she cried. "Stop! We uh - we've found the criminal - the person you're looking for."

"She's this old woman," Martha added. "Only she's not, she just looks like it."

"She's a shapeshifter," she continued, "and she has these drone slave things with her. One of them was chasing us -"

The door behind them crashed open and there was the "biker" in their pursuit, with the hole burned through him. The Judoon looked nonplussed, though she wasn't sure that Judoon had a wide range of facial expressions to begin with.

"There it is!" Martha exclaimed, pointing at it. The thing had frozen in place when it realised the Judoon had seen it and there would be no point in running.

"Look at it," she said when the alien made no moves to investigate. "We can _see the door behind it_ , doesn't that _scream_ non-human to you?"

"Non-human slab detected," the Judoon grunted, definitely glaring this time as it looked upon the creature, who finally then tried to run.

The Judoon went to chase it before Rose said, "Wait! That's just a slave, but we have the real criminal downstairs. She looks like an old woman but she isn't. She was seen drinking a human's blood to disguise herself, because she's a shapeshifter, and she's downstairs, now, in the MRI room."

The Judoon stared at her. Rose's heart was in her mouth and she could see Martha clenching and unclenching her fists nervously.

Finally, it spoke. "Show me." They did, gladly.

* * *

If her meddling with the MRI machine hadn't been enough proof that she was guilty in some way, the slab with the hole through its chest wandering in after a couple of minutes and walking up to her like a lost child would its mother gave her away pretty well. The other slab was at her side, still fully in tact. The evidence, as far as Rose was confirmed, was pretty damning.

Still, they had the scan to prove - "Human," the Judoon declared, and Rose's heart fell as the woman - Florence - brightened.

"There we are," she said. "Now -"

"Wait." Everything stopped still again. "Traces of non-human blood detected. Further scans required." Painful silence fell as these scans were carried out. "Species confirmed _Plasmavore_ , charged with the crime of murdering the child princess of Patrival Regency Nine."

Florence's expression soured instantly. "Well, she deserved it! Those pink cheeks and those blonde curls and that simpering voice. She was _begging_ for the bite of a plasmavore."

* * *

The day was saved, of course. "Florence" the Plasmavore was executed and the Judoon returned the hospital to Earth, but not before whatever the "woman" had done the MRI machine began to overload and the space police decided their job was done.

With oxygen running dangerously low, Rose had managed to scramble to unplug the machine before it exploded, as Martha seemed to think it would, and she had been sure to put the young doctor-to-be, fainted dead away, on the closest hospital bed before she pulled herself together and left the hospital before anyone could stop her.

* * *

After about three days, she went back for Martha. Rose-time, at least. For Martha, it had been a mere handful of hours. Sarah Jane had convinced her that if she truly intended to search the whole wide universe looking for a way to bring the Doctor home, she had better not do it alone, and having heard about the young woman who had helped her save the Royal Hope, she had said there was no one better for the job.

So, once she had been given the Sarah Jane bill of clean mental health, she had scrounged up from memory the name of the bar the Jones family had been planning to go to on the day the hospital went to the moon, and with a wheezing groan, the TARDIS had left Bannerman Road in search of Martha Jones.

She was exactly where Rose had expected her to be, and approached her with almost no hesitance when she spotted her standing there. "I went to the moon today," she said conversationally.

"What a day," Rose said, smiling at her.

Martha nodded. "You've changed your clothes."

"So have you," she pointed out.

"You said you have a time machine," Martha said.

"Wanna see it?"

"No. Maybe. I mean - I shouldn't. I'm busy, becoming a doctor and all."

She raised her eyebrows. "So? Time machine, remember? Scheduling's not an issue."

Martha blew out a breath and stared at the blue box behind her with something akin to wonderment. "If you're telling the truth it's not."

"You think I'm lying?"

"I think there's no such thing as a time machine, least of all one made of wood. Not very smart, is it?" Rose smiled at that, thinking of what he might have said if he had heard such a thing.

" _Not smart?_ " she could hear him saying. "She's the smartest ship in the entire universe! Let me tell you a thing or two about the TARDIS…"

"I can prove it," she said, coming back down to Earth with a pang. "Give me a date. An exact date. Go on."

Martha pursed her lips, clearly trying not to smile, as she thought. Then, she said, "Go on then. Sixteenth of March, nineteen… no, _eighteen_ thirty one." She crossed her arms and stood expectantly.

Rose grinned at her, a glimmer of anticipation replacing the usual dread that came with thoughts of the Doctor. "I'll be back in a few seconds."

Then, rushing into the time-space machine, she called, "Hear that, girl? Mind giving me a bit of help this time? I want to get this right." Because in that moment, she couldn't stomach the thought of being alone any more.

With a hum the coordinates set themselves and all she had to do was check the dermal regulator and pull the dematerialisation lever, and she was off into the past. London, England, eighteen thirty one.

Landing and rushing outside, she looked around, glad for the mostly empty streets, and then spotted what she was looking for; a newspaper, abandoned on a park bench. Snatching it up and checking that the date was correct (it was!) she returned to the TARDIS and back to Martha, striding outside mere seconds after she had left and handing the newspaper over.

Martha gaped at it for a few seconds then looked back to the ship, eyes wide and yet not at all fearful.

Rose felt a smile tug at her lips. "Want a look inside?"

She nodded. "Yeah - I mean, though, isn't it going to be a bit of a squeeze?"

"I just proved it travels in time and you're worried about it being cramped?" she asked, gently teasing. "Go on, just take a little look."

She did, stepping inside slowly. Then back outside much faster. She ran from one side, then to the other, then back to the first side and right around until she had circled it. Then side looked inside again. Then she turned to gape at Rose.

"It's - _it's bigger on the inside_."

Flat out beaming then, Rose said, "Hell yeah it is! Come on." And she led her back inside, anticipation bubbling in her veins. "We could go anywhere, anywhen. There's something I have to do, but there's no reason I can't take you somewhere, as a thanks for today, y'know?"

Martha was still stood on the entrance ramp, though she had closed the door. "And this ship's yours, yeah?"

Like an emotional yoyo, she wanted to curl in on herself again. "No, it's - I'm looking after her for… a friend, while he's away."

"Wow. Must trust you a lot to leave it in your hands." For a second, defensiveness spiked in Rose - _what was that supposed to mean?_ \- before the other woman, who hadn't noticed her change in posture, continued, "Y'know, blokes and their cars and all."

Rose, feeling a bit silly, relaxed again and forced a smile. "It's - well it's all a bit complicated."

Martha must have caught her tone, because she nodded and delicately said, "Ah, I get it," and then let the subject drop.

She traced over a button or two on the console as she considered something, then made up her mind and said, "Well Martha, we've both got a lot of work to do, but before we get to that, I think I promised you a thank you trip. What d'you fancy?" Unable to resist, she grinned widely. "With all of time and space to take into account."


	5. The Shakespeare Code

**AN: Onto chapter five! I hope Rose and Martha's dynamic is beginning to take shape as I get ready to introduce original characters and adventures. Please enjoy and be sure to leave feedback!**

* * *

They went to meet Shakespeare, in the end, and Martha took in Sixteenth Century England with all the wide-eyed wonder appropriate for a woman experiencing time travel for the first time.

Rose smiled as Martha gazed around, but she couldn't help but be melancholic. The Doctor would have loved Martha, she was sure, and he would have loved the look of amazement on her face even more. It wasn't really helping for her to think like that, but she couldn't stop herself.

"Is it safe?" Rose span around to stare at Martha, realising that she was being spoken to. "To walk around and stuff?"

She frowned bemusedly. "Well yeah, course it is. Why wouldn't it be?"

"I just mean, like in the films when people time travel and they step on a butterfly, they end up changing the future!"

 _Ah_. "Nah, I wouldn't worry too much about that. Just be careful around the butterflies," she said, grinning. Then she stopped and added, "Best we avoid getting wrapped up in big historical moments though, yeah?" A shudder passed through her and she shook it off, turning to Martha with her grin firmly back in place. "Now, lets see if we can find the Globe!"

They set off side by side, and Martha asked as they walked, "What made you think of Shakespeare then?"

"I uh - well my friend - the one two owns the TARDIS - one of the first trips he took me on, we met Charles Dickens." Martha's jaw dropped. "I just thought it might make a nice trip for you to meet an author."

"And I'm safe, aren't I?"

"I thought we'd just had this -"

" _I mean_ , I won't get carted off as a slave will I?"

Rose turned to her, stunned. Martha was looking at her with utmost seriousness, and for good reason. She could have kicked herself for not thinking of it, even more so when she acknowledged to herself that the Doctor wouldn't have made the same mistake. She had always been decent enough at her history too…

What mattered in the moment was reassuring Martha, though. "I won't let _anything_ like that happen," she said, staring deep into her eyes to convey how serious she was being. "Okay? _Nothing_." Taking Martha's hand then, she began to lead her along the street again and continued to say, "Besides, Sixteenth Century England's a different world - or I suppose it's not so different. People with different skin colours weren't _common_ , but they weren't unheard of either, if I remember my history properly. You'll be fine. _I promise_."

And when Rose made a promise, she meant it.

* * *

Rose hadn't felt like utilising the TARDIS' extensive wardrobe, not ready to do something _else_ that was so intimately linked, in her mind, with the Doctor, but she had donned a long, dull brown coat before stepping out, and had encouraged Martha to follow suit. She did without question.

"I get it," she had said, "best to remain inconspicuous, right?"

"Right."

 _Right_. Best to remain inconspicuous. Undercover. To not draw attention. That was best, right? Right.

They drew attention almost immediately.

Martha was enthralled by the performance on the stage, watching as a piece of history was written around her, and Rose tried to match her enthusiasm.

She had to be completely honest with herself; despite being the one who thought of visiting Shakespeare, she wasn't really a fan. Memories of grim school days, slogging through language she didn't understand under the bored eyes of various English teachers who didn't really care whether their students understood the texts in front of them were stark in her head. Martha was so much better educated that she was. It became more embarrassing the more she thought about it.

"Where's Shakespeare?" Martha called, breaking Rose from her musings. In her excitement, it seemed she had forgotten what they said about 'inconspicuous'. " _Author! Author!_ " She stopped and looked at Rose. "Do people do that?" she asked under her breath.

Just as she asked this, the crowd all rose up and began echoing the chant. Seconds later, the man himself waltzed out onto the stage, looking around at the crowd with a self-assured expression, and an amused smile lit Rose's face. "I think they do now!"

She watched with mild amusement as the man himself, prowled up and down the stage, drawing laughs and shrieks of delight from the crowd, but from the moment Shakespeare announced the upcoming performance of Love's Labour's Won, a feeling of dread had begun welling up in her stomach. She couldn't really explain it. Like hearing the thunder and waiting for the rain.

"I'm not an expert," Martha said, "but I've never heard of Love's Labour's Won."

"Neither have I," Rose said, admitting to herself that it could have just been another of the numerous gaps in her education. But then, Martha hadn't heard of it either. "It's weird. Something here's… wrong."

Martha's eyebrows raised. "What?"

"Dunno yet. It's just a gut feeling." Yes, a gut feeling that something terrible was about to happen to William Shakespeare. "Come on."

It was shockingly easy to find out where the playwright was staying - he was the talk of the town - and Rose thought about how much more lock-and-key celebrityism was in her day. If Shakespeare was a Twenty First century phenomenon, she wouldn't have been able to get within ten feet of the door to the inn he stayed at, if she had been able to find out where he was to begin with.

As they headed off for their destination, Martha's eyes roamed around the old London streets with renewed wonder, and Rose couldn't help but join her.

"It's like -" Martha cut herself off and regathered her thoughts, then went again, speaking in a hushed tone. "It's like, I wanna take it all in, but I don't want to stare."

Rose nodded amiably. "That's fine. I'll try to find a planet where it's not rude to stare next time, yeah?" They shared a grin, and before long, they were coming to a stop at their destination; Shakespeare's inn.

Slipping inside, Rose tried to decide how she was going to handle the situation. If she were the Doctor, she would barge into Shakespeare's room and make herself well at home, but she wasn't, and she didn't have it in her to be so obnoxious, so she tried to think of something else.

"What's the plan?" Martha asked under her breath.

"Still in the making," she said. "Something's going to happen soon, and I'd bet my life on it happening near William." _Or even to him_ , she thought with a shudder.

The best thing she could think of to start with was the inn. If Shakespeare was staying there for the time being, Rose and Martha would be too. They might struggle to get a room, she acknowledged to herself as she approached the blonde woman who seemed to run the place. She wasn't sure whether women travelling without the accompaniment of a man really happened in this time period. If it didn't she would just have to improvise.

The proprietor smiled at them as they approached. "Evening ladies," she said, coming over to them. "Can I help you?"

"Er - yeah, thanks," she said, trying for a smile. "My uh - friend and I have been travelling, and we just wondered whether there was - well, room at the inn."

"Ah, a room, for you and your blackamoor friend," Dolly said, smiling carelessly. Martha's jaw dropped, and Rose's wasn't far behind.

"What did you say?" her friend asked, at the same time as she asked, "What did you just call her?"

"Oh, is that not the word we use nowadays?" Dolly asked carelessly. "What is it then? An Ethiop girl?" Neither of them could muster up responses. "Ah, there's a room free for you to take."

" _Blackamoor?_ " Martha repeated, disbelief in her tone. Dolly turned her smile on her then and asked her if something was wrong.

Before either of them could even _think_ of an answer, a man behind them piped up. "Is there something going on here?"

Another asked, "Are these _women_ giving you trouble, Dolly?"

"No no!" Rose called, laughing nervously. "Everything's fine, isn't it Martha?"

Stunned by the attention she had drawn, she nodded jerkily and said, "Er - verily! Forsooth."

Rose winced and mimed a cut it out motion as another man called, "What's _that_ supposed to mean? What's she saying?"

"Martha is from a far off land," Rose said, desperately thinking of an out. "Er - Freedonia. They speak differently there!"

" _Hey!_ " The room froze. "Might I work in peace, without having to listen to squabbles from all of you?" She and Martha turned to see -

 _Shakespeare himself_ , standing in the doorway to another room, scowling. Then, as he took in the scene before him, the irritation melted away, and she could have sworn she heard him say, "Hey nonny nonny," to himself, before saying at a volume loud enough to silence the room, "Away with all of you. Leave these two ladies be." Then, to she and Martha, "Come and sit with me, please."

Exchanging disbelieving looks, they acquiesced and followed him into the room he had come from.

"Such unusual dress, the both of you wear," he said before they had the chance to speak themselves. He glanced back at their coats, and then surreptitiously at the trouser legs poking out from beneath them. "Strange indeed," he said quietly, smiling at she and Martha.

He invited them to sit and they did. "Er - thank you for helping us out there," she said, smiling awkwardly. "I'm not really sure what happened…"

"Ah, it is past," he dismissed, waving a hand. "Though I must say I am surprised. Do you not have an escort with you, all the way out here in town?" he asked, his - _flirtatious?_ \- smile remaining.

"No, there's nobody," Rose said without stopping to think. "Not anymore."

Her voice must have carried some weight to it, because Shakespeare's expression closed off and he bowed his head for a moment. "I'm most aggrieved for your loss, good lady."

She managed a smile, internally shrieking " _What the hell was that, Tyler?_ " as he returned his attentions to Martha, where they primarily remained until the door opened with a bang and a man stormed inside, brimming with anger.

"This is abominable behaviour!" he raged. "A new play with no warning? I demand to see a script, Mr Shakespeare! As Master of Revels, every new script must be registered at my office and examined by me before it can be performed!"

Shakespeare tried to wave him off. "Tomorrow morning," he said. "First thing, I'll send it 'round."

He spluttered. "I don't work to _your_ schedule, _you_ work to _mine!_ The script, _now._ "

" _I can't._ "

"Then tomorrow's performance is cancelled! I'm returning to my office for a banning order. If it's the last thing I do, Love's Labour's Won will _never_ be played."

Well that answered her questions about the play. She still didn't feel happy though…

* * *

She was right not to. Mere seconds had passed before the first scream ripped the night.

Lynley - the Master of Revels himself - was dead. Drowned. On dry land.

People gathered around him, their individual panics mounting and coalescing and forming one giant storm of terror. Rose watched a young barmaid observe the proceedings with an eerie calm about her, before the smallest ghost of a smirk made its way to her face and she disappeared into the crowd, vanishing from sight.

They didn't stick around much longer. Martha's failed attempts to save Lynley's life had left her shaken, and so at the earliest opportunity, Rose had taken them back to their room.

"I'm sorry about all earlier," she said once the door was shut and the two of them were left alone. "I just didn't think." Staring down at the scratchy bed sheets, she shook her head. "This isn't something I'm used to. I'm normally just the sidekick. The Doctor - my friend - he's so much better than all this stuff than me." For the hundredth time, she thought that it should have been her who fell.

"Well, I know I don't really have any other time travelling friends to measure you up against," Martha said hesitantly, "but I reckon you're doing a bang up job so far."

Rose managed a weak smile, that brightened as her words sunk in. "Friend. Yeah. We're friends."

She wasn't sure which was more alarming; that this woman had managed to establish herself in Rose's life almost without her noticing, or that she was so shocked Martha would consider her a friend already.

"Of course," Martha said in a matter-of-fact manner. "So what's the plan now?"

She huffed a sigh and any lightheartedness vanished. "Try not to die."

* * *

This plan was going off like a dream until they were woken hours later by a second terrified scream disrupting the peace of the night.

It was witchcraft. Or at least, it _looked_ like witchcraft. She thought back to the "ghosts" of Charles Dickens and shuddered. Not only that though, she was sure the barmaid she had spotted leaving the scene was involved. Possibly a witch too, like the one who had been spotted flying away from the scene of Dolly Bailey's murder. Or an alien. Or an alien witch.

An alien witch, who, at that, was going after Shakespeare. Was it just a coincidence that she should kill the person who was going to stop the play from going ahead, seconds after he declared his intentions? Or Dolly, known to be close to the man himself. If she could only find the girl again, she might be able to get some answers.

" _Well_ ," she thought, glancing over at Martha, " _it's not like I'll be sleeping now_."

"I think there's someone we need to be looking for," she said to her quietly. Opposite them, Shakespeare lamented Dolly's loss, and didn't notice. "I saw one of the girls who works here at the scene of Lynley's death earlier. She was watching everyone panic and seemed to be enjoying it. Like she knew it was going to happen -"

"Or caused it," Martha finished, eyes going wide. "We have to find her. What if she's a witch too? I mean, both of the people who've died so far were connected to him," she said, nodding over to the playwright, who noticed the movement and began listening to them. "What if he's next? Shakespeare can't _die_ , not now!"

"Definitely not," Rose muttered. "So we have to track her down."

"Track who down?" Shakespeare asked, frowning between them. "The way you talk, it is as if you have an idea of what's going on. Of who is causing these deaths."

She hesitated before admitting, "I might have an idea. I saw a suspicious woman watching Lynley drown. I think she could be behind what's going on." An idea struck her. "She works here, actually - one of the barmaids. Sort of petite, delicate features, browny-blonde hair…" She shook her head. "You don't know who I mean, do you?"

His frown deepened. "I cannot say I know who you mean." She and Martha exchanged a frustrated look. "But I was listening to what you said. You spoke of witches."

"Well yeah, I -"

"Peter Streete spoke of witches also."

* * *

Peter Streete. The man who sketches the plans for the Globe Theatre, apparently. The man who had gone mad. Who spoke of witches.

The madman in Bedlam, the imfamous mental hospital.

Reaching out, she placed a comforting hand atop his head, feeling disgust rush through her veins as at the action he flinched away, like he was expecting to be struck. "It's okay, Peter," she whispered. "My name is Rose. I'm going to help you. Protect you. But I need you to tell me what I'm protecting you from. I need you to think back to before, when everything was okay, and tell me what went wrong. Tell me about the witches, Peter."

When the man finally spoke, his voice was weak and distant. "Witches spoke to Peter. In the night, they whispered. They whispered. Got Peter to build the Globe to their design. _Their_ design! The fourteen walls. Always fourteen. When the work was done they snapped poor Peter's wits."

"Who were these witches?" she asked, heart hammering. "Did they have names?"

"No, no, no," he mumbled, hands clutching at his head. Rose's heart clenched painfully at the sight. "Ca-Ca-Carrionite," he finally whimpered, curling in on himself completely. _Carrionite_. Was that the witch woman's name? Or just the name of the witch who had driven him mad?

"Where did Peter see the witches? Carrionite?" she asked gently. "Where in the city, Peter? I need you tell me, please."

"All Hallows Street," Peter whispered, and then suddenly the air in the room _shifted_. Rose's head snapped around to see a grotesque woman hunched in the corner.

"Too many words," she hissed, and Martha jerked back in shock.

" _What the hell?_ "

"Just one touch the heart," the gnarled creature breathed, reaching out.

" _No!_ " Rose shouted, but it was too late. The woman touched her hand to Peter's chest, and he slumped down, dead.

"Witch!" Shakespeare cried. "I'm seeing a witch!"

"Now who would be next, hm?" the witch mused, scanning the group. "Just one touch. I'll stop your frantic hearts. Poor, fragile mortals."

"Let us out!" Martha screamed, running to the cell door. "Let us out!"

Egged on, the witch continued with her taunts. "Who will die first, hm?"

Rose narrowed her eyes and drew herself up to full height. "Well, if you're looking for volunteers."

"No, don't!" Martha protested.

"Can't you _stop_ her?" Shakespeare asked, looking between Martha and Rose.

"No mortal has power over me."

"Who are you?" Rose asked, ignoring the bragging. "Peter knew you. Called you Carrionite. Is that your -"

She never had the chance to get the entire question out because the moment she spoke the name "Carrionite", the witch shrieked and cried out, and vanished in a cloud of smoke.

Silent reigned in the cell, broken by Martha. " _What?_ " Wide eyed, she asked, "What did you do?"

"Nothing!" she exclaimed, as shocked as her two companions. "All I did was say her name."

"Then that must be it somehow. You named her."

* * *

"Words are powerful, aren't they," she stated, marching back towards the inn with Martha and Shakespeare in tow. "Speak the right words in the right time, at the right place, and the world can be changed. Permanently."

"And these witches, they're targeting the greatest wordsmith of them all," Martha continued. "But why?"

"Oh, the same reason any alien race comes to Earth," she said. "To take it over. None of them ever just want to check in on us. Now think. Why would the witches specify fourteen?" she asked, trying to scrounge up a helpful answer. "What's special about fourteen?"

Martha shrugged helplessly. "I mean, there're fourteen lines in a sonnet."

"Really?" she asked, looking sharply at Shakespeare. "Can't be a coincidence." Not with Mr Sonnet himself apparently the witch's target. "Wonder if there's time to nip back to the TARDIS and look it up." She surely had enough information by now to find _something_ helpful. Her gaze shifted back to Shakespeare and she said pensively, "It all revolves around _you_ ; the man with the words."

" _Me?_ But I've done nothing."

"Hold on though," Martha said. "What were you doing last night, when that witch who killed Dolly was in the room?"

"Finishing the play."

"And how does it end?" Rose asked.

"The boys get the girls. They have a bit of a dance. It's all as funny and thought provoking as usual. Except…" He trailed off, eyes going a bit glassy. "Those last few lines. The funny thing is, I don't actually remember writing them."

Her eyes widened. "See, what is that? What is it, possession? They're writing words _through_ you, and they obviously want it performed or they wouldn't have been in such a hurry to off Lynley."

"They had the Globe designed in their way, with fourteen sides specifically," Martha continued. "And now they want the play that they wrote performed there."

She groaned with frustration. " _Oh,_ none of this is helpful! It doesn't tell me anything!"

"No, it does, it does," Martha said hurriedly, putting her hands on Rose's shoulders. "They're witches, these Carrionite things, and they're using the Globe Theatre to cast some sort of spell, right? But if there are words that can end the world there are words that can save it -"

"And there's no one better than the man we're with to figure them out," Rose finished. "Will, we need to get to the theatre. How long until the play starts?"

"It will have started already!" he said. "We must hurry."

"To the Globe," Rose agreed, setting off at a run before halting sharply. "Where _is_ the Globe?"

With a nervous laugh, Shakespeare led the way.

* * *

"That went well," Martha said jokingly as they sat side by side on the edge of the stage, looking out over the now empty theatre. The Carrionites shrieked continually from within the crystal ball, and Rose rolled it absently about the stage.

"Yes, I think so," she said, nodding along.

Martha turned to her with an incredulous look. "I was taking the piss."

"I wasn't." She huffed a laugh. "Believe me, it could have gone much worse. Must be something about English writers…"

Martha leveled at her an appraising look. "You know, back there with Peter, something weird happened."

"Yes, I _had_ noticed," she said, grinning.

Martha shook her head. "No, I mean - your voice _changed_. You sounded different." Rose froze, eyes widening and boring into the side of Martha's head. "Like, it was you speaking, but you sounded so far away. It was… weird."

Taking in a deep breath and trying not to let her sudden panic show, she sat back and bit her lip. Rose had an ever-growing list of things she needed to research when she had the time. While resting at Sarah Jane's house following the Judoon debacle, she had read up further on the aliens themselves, and more on the Shadow Proclamation as a whole. She was happy to keep using them as leverage in confrontations, but she didn't much like the sound of the people themselves. Added to her list were also Plasmavores and Slabs, and most recently, Carrionites.

Now she also had herself to think of, apparently. First her glowing appearance with Donna, and now her voice taking on a strange quality when reaching out to Peter… Something was happening to her, and she has no idea what.

Getting to her feet and tossing the crystal ball once, she walked to join Shakespeare, where he stood looking out over the theatre. He still wore the "neck brace" that she had given him, she was pleased to note.

"You alright there Will?"

"My new masterpiece," Shakespeare sighed. "Lost forever."

"You could write it up again," Martha suggested, but Rose shook her head.

"Probably best not to."

"Oh, but I've got new ideas," he said. "Perhaps it's time I wrote about fathers and sons, in memory of my boy, my precious Hamnet."

Martha blinked. "Hamnet?"

"That's him," Shakespeare said, nodding.

"Ham _net_?"

"And what's wrong with that?"

"Anyway, time we were off," Rose said with a small laugh. "Got to get back on a ship to Freedonia."

"You mean travel on through time and space," Shakespeare said, and Rose blinked.

"Er, what?"

"You are from the future. Both of you are, that's not too hard to work out," Shakespeare said. _It wasn't?_ "Now Martha, let me say goodbye to you in a new verse. A sonnet for my Dark Lady." Martha's eyes were blown wide, and Rose bit her lip to stop herself from laughing. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate -"

He was interrupted by two of his actors, who sprinted into the theatre looking dazed. " _Will!_ "

"Will, you'll never believe it, she's here!" one said. "She's turned up!"

"We're the talk of the town," the other continued, "she heard about last night. She wants us to perform again!"

"Who?" Martha asked, looking between them.

"Her Majesty," one of the men exclaimed. "She's here!"

Rose and Martha both straightened as a red-headed woman walked in, two pike men at her side. "Queen Elizabeth the First!"

The woman stopped, eyes wide. " _You!_ "

Rose blinked. "Me?"

"Rose Tyler! One of my sworn enemies!"

" _What?_ "

" _Off with her head!_ "

" _WHAT?_ "

"Never mind what!" Martha grabbed Rose's hand and pulled her into a sprint. "Just run! See you Will, and thanks!"

Shakespeare merely laughed, watching as the two mysterious women ran for their lives from the Globe Theatre, never to be seen (by his eyes) again.


	6. Tea With Wilf

**AN: Bit of a change of pace this time! No episode rewrites, but a lot of important set up, and yes, I will be rearranging the canon episode order a bit. Thanks for your follows, favourites and reviews. They mean a lot. Please enjoy!**

* * *

The Doctor was sulking.

Yes, he was sulking, and trying to pretend otherwise. Seven months. Seven long, miserable months with an increasingly pregnant Jackie Tyler as company while he tried to think of something! Anything, to get him home!

He was careful not to take his moods out on Jackie; none of this was her fault, and she had been nothing but hospitable towards him since his incarceration in this godforsaken universe began. He was as polite to her as his short fuse could bring him to be, but it was difficult when this universe was so useless! Dull!

Nothing he could think of to get himself home led anywhere, the people weren't trusting of him whatsoever so his investigations were hampered left right and centre by busybody humans who thought they knew better than him. He supposed they were still Torchwood, this universe or his own. Always thinking they knew better than him. _Bloody Torchwood_.

His mood weighed itself down further at the familiar phrase. It was one he repeated to himself at least three times a day. Rose, stood as a ghost before him on that awful beach, had coined the phrase and it was one he had begun to cling to. Rose. Biting back a low hiss, he hoped, quietly and to himself, as was always the case these days, that she was okay. Maybe she had managed to move on. Found herself a nice place to live and just... just carried on living. At the thought though, he heard an evil, selfish whisper in his mind, one that said he hoped Rose hadn't moved on, that she was still waiting for him to come back. That she was still his Rose, all pink and yellow and ready to see more of the universe.

That day on Bad Wolf Bay though...

Jackie had been right, she had looked as though she hadn't slept in weeks. Hair limp, face washed out against the beige of the beach. Beaches were awful. He hated beaches. Nothing good ever happened on beaches. D-Day? Happened on a beach. Seagulls? Existed around beaches. Bad beaches. Bad, bad, beaches. The worst beach of all? The one at Bad Wolf Bay.

He snorted to himself in disgust. _Bad Wolf_. Nothing but bad omens, everywhere he looked.

Heaving a sigh, he turned to his newest plan and began reviewing the schematics, looking for the flaws, the pitfalls, everything that could go wrong. This was really his last resort. A dimension cannon, he called it.

* * *

Rose was losing her mind.

After their encounter with Shakespeare, she and Martha had retired in two separate directions, her new friend off to the bedroom the TARDIS had provided for her, and Rose back to the library. She had dived back into her studies, looking into first the aliens encountered on her most recent adventure, and then into Plasmavores and Judoon. These three took an hour or so of her time, and then she dove into the folder put together by the TARDIS, on the creatures the Doctor had encountered over the years, in case she should run into them herself.

She read about Davros, creator of the Daleks, and tried not to shudder with revulsion at the paragraphs about the Kaleds and Thals and their generations-long war. Her mind bent and swerved and confused itself as she considered that the Doctor had only been involved because the Time Lords had apparently _sent him there_ , to that conflict, to stop it all before it began. To destroy the Daleks before they could become. How he had, eventually, decided against destroying them.

She wondered whether he ever regretted his decision, in his countless encounters with the creatures in the years proceeding the event. During the Time War, on the GameStation… at Canary Wharf. Rose couldn't even say, in the moment, that she understood where he was coming from. To allow the Daleks to be was the most Doctor decision she could think of, but even so, it was difficult to stomach. Did that make her a worse person than him? She wasn't sure.

The pages on the history of the Daleks, of their deformed Davros, were many, and reading through them all took her a long time, though with all the reading she had been doing lately, she was getting through entries a lot faster than she had at first. Soon though, she had finished, and after making herself a cuppa to wash down the revulsion, she turned heavily to the stack of books she had collected on travel between universes and steeled herself.

She soon lost track of time (as did happen on the good ship TARDIS) when faced with the far heavier task of understanding scientific theories and getting her head around what _any of it bloody meant_. The whole task felt utterly hopeless, if she was being honest with herself. Three pages into the first book, she was stopping every line or so to complain to herself about her lack of understanding. She tossed that book aside and pulled another to her, hoping for better results, but all that happened was a repeat of the process, over and over and over.

The problem was simple; she wasn't smart enough to understand. She could read these books until she was blue in the face, but without any understanding of what the words in them meant, she was lost. What could she do about that though? Was there some sort of space Uni that could teach her the relevant information? And if there was, how would she get herself in? If she was being honest, her best bet would to be to find someone on Earth who understood this stuff to help her out.

"Wonder if UNIT could help," she mused aloud, staring despondent at the sad pile of books that, while being written in English, may as well have been scribed in a completely alien language for all the understanding she had of them.

The door creaked open. "Hey, it's me. Mind if I come in?" When Rose shook her head no, Martha stepped fully into the room. "I don't really know how I found you…"

"TARDIS must have led you here," she said absently. She couldn't even bring herself to look up as Martha stared, wide-eyed, over the pile of books consuming the table.

"What's going on?" she asked, walking over and gingerly picking up one of the books. She glanced over the cover and her eyebrows rose. "Have you got exams you're running from too?" she asked jokingly, though she clearly knew that wasn't the case. "Is that what this is?"

"No, but maybe going back to school wouldn't be the worst thing," she said, staring despondently at the pile. "Can't make head nor tail of all this."

"Why do you need to?" Martha asked. "What's going on? Is it about that friend of yours?"

"Yeah," she said heavily. "We were - we got separated a few months ago. He said getting back's impossible but I can't just leave him trapped, so I've been trying to study multiverse theory, anything that might give me an idea of how to make passage between universes possible."

Martha's expression of disbelief went to newer and newer heights as she spoke, and When she stopped, she hesitantly said, "Look, I know I don't really… _know you_ , or anything, but it sounds to me like you need a plan."

Rose tensed and tried not to go on the defensive. Was it Martha's place to say that, really? When they had only known each other for a day?

"Well what am I supposed to do?" she asked, tone fringing on desperate. "The Doctor's the expert - the one who knew what he was doing - and now he's trapped, with no way of me ever bringing him back! He's _trapped_ , without his ship, without me, in a universe that's not his own, and there's nothing I can do about it!"

"But if he was the expert and he said it was impossible -"

"He's called things impossible before and been wrong. Me, for example." At the reminder, she felt her confidence bolstered. "I can bring him back. I just need to figure out how."

Martha stared at her for a good, long while, then said, "Well that sounds like a lot of work. We'd better get started, hadn't we?"

* * *

Huon particles.

The words stared out at her from the monitor in the console room. They were an energy from the start of the universe, destroyed by the Time Lords - _that_ gave her a start - during their war with the _Racnoss_. They were golden in appearance and nowadays existed only within the heart of the TARDIS. She swallowed.

In all her worrying over the Doctor, she had kept forgetting about whatever it was that was going on with her. Specifically, the glow Donna had seen, or the change in her voice Martha had heard in the jail cell in London.

The glow was the same one that had pulled Donna to the TARDIS, which meant it was something to do with -

Rose stopped breathing. Her thoughts stuttered then stopped. She thought back to what she had said to the Cult of Skaro at Canary Wharf. " _I took the time vortex into my head and I turned him to dust…_ " And how had she done that?

Memories of the GameStation were fuzzy at best. She had been in a total panic, thinking of nothing but her best friend trapped amongst thousands of Daleks, with her millenia away from him with no way to help. Her mum - God, her wonderful mum - had helped. She had brought her a truck.

To break into the heart of the TARDIS.

The same heart she had seen for the first time in a golden glow, when the ship had opened herself up.

Rose had broken into the heart of time itself and took it into herself to become -

The Bad Wolf.

The golden haze of amnesia that was her time spent as the Bad Wolf, when her Doctor had sacrificed himself to save her…

Because no one could survive that. Because behind that golden glow was something indomitable and deadly.

And Donna had been soaked in it.

"I have to find her!" she exclaimed, rushing around the console as quickly as she could. Martha, who had been sat on the jump seat trying to get her head around one of the books on multiverse theory, jumped out of her skin.

"What?" she asked. "Find who?"

Rose threw the dematerialisation lever and explained, "Before I met you there was this woman, Donna, who ended up in the TARDIS on her wedding day in this golden glow, and it turned out that her fiance had been poisoning her coffee with this liquid stuff for _months,_ and that was what made it happen, but the gold particles - it's pure time energy and it's fatal, but Donna was _soaked_ with it." And so was she. But never mind that.

Martha's expression hardened in a familiar look of determination. "We'd better find her fast then."

Rose's throat was too dry for her to reply. _God_ , she hoped Donna was okay. She had set the TARDIS coordinates for the same place she had dropped Donna off at the end of their adventure together and hoped the woman hadn't moved since then.

Sprinting from the TARDIS and pulling herself up short just as a car whizzed by, blaring its horn at her, she took a second to collect herself before running for the house they had landed opposite to, Martha hot on her tail.

Hammering on the front door, she managed to hold herself still for maybe two seconds before she was ringing the bell, over and over -

Until the door opened to an elderly man. Rose's heart sank. Was this the wrong house? Had Donna moved after all? Worse, had she died?

"Yes, can I help you sweetheart?" She blinked, realising that she had been staring at the man and not speaking. Martha nudged her.

"Uh - I - I was just wondering whether a woman called Donna Noble lived here?"

The man's expression brightened. "Oh, are you two friends of hers?" he asked, and at the confirmation that he knew her, Rose felt herself relax.

"Yeah, we are," she said, "and we need to talk to her. It's really important."

"Oh, well I'm sorry but she's gone away. Off on holiday to Egypt!" he said, looking rather pleased, in opposition to Rose's plummeting stomach. "Said something about wanting to see the world after all that nasty business with that bloke Lance." The old man's expression turned surprisingly dark at the mention of the man - but then she supposed it would when he was her -

"I'm sorry," she said, "how exactly do you know Donna?"

"Ain't it obvious?" he asked jokingly. "I'm her granddad Wilf. She never mentioned me?"

He was still joking, but Rose said, "No, I - we don't really know each other that well. I just needed to talk to her."

"Well she's not due home for another three days," he said, looking regretful. "I'm sorry. I could pass on a message for you."

"No, no that's okay," she said, rational mind beginning to take over again. If she was on holiday in Egypt, seeing the world, it meant she wasn't ill - or worse. "We'll come back."

"Well it's a shame for you to have come out here just to leave again," he said. "You girls hungry? Thirsty? I'll put the kettle on! It's not often I get to meet friends of my little girl."

She couldn't help but smile at that, and turned to Martha, who didn't seem to know what to say either. She smiled and shook her head, telling Rose to decide for herself.

Turning back to Wilf, Rose smiled and said, "That'd be lovely, thanks."

* * *

"You know, when my little Donna was a child, she put herself on a bus to Strathclyde because her mum wouldn't take her on holiday." Wilf chuckled to himself as he pottered about the kitchen fetching mugs and biscuits.

Rose and Martha were seated at the table. They had offered to help and he turned them down, saying it helped him learn his way around.

"I haven't really lived here that long," he admitted. "Poor old Geoff died not long ago and I moved in to help Sylvia cope with it."

She frowned. "Geoff? He was -"

"Donna's dad," Wilf said. It seemed wrong for the happy old man to be so down. He turned to she and Martha and frowned. "You didn't know?"

"Ah - well, like Rose said, we haven't known her very long," Martha said quickly.

He nodded, not looking completely happy, but enough to continue. "Well, first with that disastrous wedding - I missed it, you know - and then Geoff passing away like he did, I thought my girls needed someone to be there for them."

Rose nodded. "And Sylvia - is she with Donna now?" It might be a good thing if she went with her mother. If the side effects of the huon energy were delayed, having a family member with her might come in handy.

"No, she's in town with her friends," he said. Oh. Well there went that strand of hope. "She'll be back soon though, if you wanted to talk to her."

"Oh, no, that's okay." She still remembered the somewhat dour woman from the reception, and on second thought decided that it was probably best Donna wasn't off trying to find herself with her mum in tow.

"We won't keep you that long," Martha added when Rose made no move to explain herself.

They drank their tea and Rose nibbled at a biscuit for Wilf's sake, while the old man asked Martha about herself; her family her job, her doctorate. She was just glad he wasn't questioning her, because she wasn't sure what she would say. "I'm a time traveller whose family are all either dead or trapped away in a parallel universe." Something suggested that he might call the emergency services before she had finished regaling her story.

While they talked she glanced over a newspaper. Wayne and Coleen Rooney were having another kid while on the page opposite, scientists warned that the number of bees was declining at a worrying rate. Someone had written in to complain about the budget and someone else, to complain about food poisoning from their local Thai restaurant. It was all so… normal. Normal in a way she hadn't experienced in so, so long. It was even a little bit, dare she say, _alien_.

" _She won't be Rose Tyler_ ," a ghost whispered in the back of her head, causing her to freeze up. " _She won't even be human_."

Sucking in a harsh breath, she turned the page with more force than was necessary and was confronted with a story about a brand new diet pill in the works. **Adipose Industries!** the headline of the two page spread declared. _The Fat Just Walks Away_. Accompanying the sensational words was a picture of a blonde woman, posing with a golden necklace in the shape of a pill. Her smile seemed forced, but she supposed that not everyone liked having their picture taken.

"I know a few people who'd kill for some of that," Martha said, and Rose turned to see her reading the story from over her shoulder.

"So do I," Rose said with a small laugh. "It'll be chaos when this stuff releases."

"You talking about that Adipose stuff?" Wilf asked. "There was a piece on that on Breakfast TV this morning. Sylvia said the same as you - but she still cut out the pre-order form." He added, an amused twinkle in his eye. She looked and saw that indeed, a corner had been cut out from the paper.

"I haven't heard about this stuff before," Martha said, shooting Rose a surreptitious look. "I have I missed something?"

Suppressing a sardonic smile, she showed her the date on the paper - a day after they first set off together. She saw Martha relax somewhat and had to admit to relaxing herself - if she had made the same mistake the Doctor had when they first began travelling together, she wasn't sure she would have a good enough excuse ready to stop Martha from killing her.

"It was only announced the other day," Wilf said. "Today's the first time we've actually heard owt about it. Sounds too good to be true if you ask me."

Rose hummed agreeably, glanced at the clock, and stood with a sigh. "Thanks for the tea, Wilf. We should probably get going though."

Martha hesitated for half a second, before standing too. "Yeah. Tea was lovely, but my family will be wondering where I am." She said this with a pointed look at Rose, who nodded. Looked like they were heading back to Martha's place next.

"Ah, well don't let me keep you girls," he said, standing too. Rose went to put the empty mugs in the sink, only leaving them unwashed when he waved her away. "Never you mind those, you just get yourselves home."

He led them back to the front door and said, "So, I'll tell Donna you stopped in when she gets back, will I?"

"Uh…" Was that a good idea? She didn't want the woman to think that Rose was _stalking her_ or something. "Tell you what, just let her know what Rose, with the blue box, is looking for her." She smiled wide and patted the man on the arm. "That'll be good enough. And thank you again, for the tea. It was - it was really nice."

"Don't you worry sweetheart," he said, giving her hand a pat too. "I can always tell when a lady needs a good cuppa. Whatever's wrong, I hope you feel better soon."

At that, she almost froze up. "I - I think I will, Wilf. Really." She smiled at Martha, and Martha smiled back, and for a moment, she could almost forget anything was wrong at all.

* * *

Martha's flat was quite nice. Decked out in soothing blues and greens, it was comfortable. Homey. Rose relaxed back into the sofa as her friend moved about the place, ignoring the beep of her voice mail as she tidied up and gathered together some of her medical texts.

"If there's going to be studying on the TARDIS, some of it's going to be for my exams," she said. "Knowing we both have work to do might actually help."

She was right, of course. It wouldn't be right for Martha to spend all her time helping Rose when she had her own life stuff to take care of. In a flush of shame, she had realised that until Martha said it herself, she had not taken into account Martha's medical school studies when she accepted the woman's help in getting back the Doctor.

The phone rang again, and Martha ignored it.

"Leave it!" she called from the next room over. "It's probably no one."

It rang and rang and rang - then went to voicemail. " _Hi, I'm out. Leave a message._ "

A voice said, " _Martha, are you there? Pick it up, will you?_ "

"It's my mum," she said, grimacing slightly. "Definitely leave it."

" _All right then, pretend that you're out if you like. I was only calling to say that your sister's on TV._ " Rose's eyebrows went up as Martha came into the room, face curled into an expression of pure disbelief. " _On the news of all things. Just thought you might be interested_."

Hurriedly, Martha switched on the TV, and the two of them watched with rapt attention as an elderly man, dressed in a sharp suit, spoke to the cameras. At his side was a young woman who resembled Martha.

" _The details are top secret_ ," the man said.

"How could _Tish_ end up on the news?" Martha asked.

" _Tonight, I will demonstrate a device which will redefine our world._ "

"She's got a new job," Martha continued. "PR for some research lab." Rose watched the screen through narrowed eyes. Her danger alarm was beginning to ring.

Then, he said it.

" _With the push of a single button, I will change what it means to be human._ "


	7. The Lazarus Experiment

**AN: Relieved to have got this out at all. Half an hour before I was ready to upload, my internet connection decided it wasn't private anymore, for some reason, and the task of uploading without it, from my phone with data, has half killed me.**

 **Anyway. I've always liked this episode. It's one of my favourites of Martha's, though I've heard not everyone feels the same way. (As a side note, you never realise just how OP the sonic screwdriver is until you're trying to write episodes without it.) Hopefully I've done a good job of it though, and I hope you all enjoy the nod towards what this "season arc" will be!**

* * *

Changing into appropriate black tie attire in the TARDIS wardrobe, Rose and Martha played a game of truths to pass the time.

"Okay, confession," she said. "I'm not that into the Little Mermaid."

Martha gaped. "What? That's _unacceptable_."

Rose grinned and nodded. "It's just, when I was a kid I had this Ariel lunch box my mum got me from the charity shop, and I _loved_ it, and carried it everywhere. Then, one day, I got into this fight with a girl from the estate, and she snatched it up and threw it under a passing van. It ruined the whole film for me."

"Ouch."

"Yeah."

There was a few seconds pause. "So… what's your mum like?"

A lump blocked Rose's throat. "She was amazing," she said. "Always did her best for me."

Martha's jaw flapped uselessly for a moment, before she cast her eyes down and said, "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well…" Rose stared down at the floor for a few seconds, the sound of the TARDIS humming mournfully ringing in her ears, before she shook herself and picked the first appropriate dress off the rail. "What do you think of this one?" It was emerald green and chiffon, and she quite liked it.

"Looks good," Martha said, forcing a smile. "I might go burgundy."

* * *

Lazarus Industries was a modern building about a twenty minute walk from Martha's flat. The place had been decked out for the party but she could tell that normally it was one of those remarkably unremarkable places, just another bland spot in the ever plainer landscape of London.

She and Martha had each taken a flute of champagne upon arrival and were taking a look around the place as they were approached by the same young woman they had seen on TV earlier that day; Tish Jones, Martha's sister.

"Tish!" Martha exclaimed, looking delighted to see her sister again after the day she had had. Rose smiled politely as they reacquainted, and then turned to her. "This is my friend Rose. She's interested in this sort of thing, so I've brought her along."

"Hi," she said, "how're you doing?"

Tish stared at her, seemingly dumbfounded for a few seconds, then said, "There's no one called Rose on the list. How did you get in?"

"Martha's plus one," she said, moving quickly onto compliments. "Lovely event you've put together. Really impressive."

Tish's expression lightened and she smiled, nodding. "Do you think? I wasn't so sure; this is the first big thing I've ever actually done, so…"

"It's great," Rose was quick to assure. "Really."

Their talk was interrupted by the arrival of - Rose assumed - Martha's mother and brother. "Your father's caused me enough heartache already with his menopause and his trophy girlfriend," presumably-Mrs-Jones was saying.

"Yeah, Mum, I know," presumably-Martha's-brother sighed, glancing upwards. "It's just something he said last night…"

"Mum!" Martha exclaimed, throwing her arms around her mother.

Mrs Jones furrowed her brow further in her confusion, patting her daughter on the back. "Alright, what's the occasion?"

Martha blinked heavily, as if just remembering that back in the 'real world', almost no time had passed at all since the two last spoke. "What do you mean?" she asked, laying the innocence on a bit thick. "I'm just pleased to see you, that's all."

"You saw me last night."

"I know. I just missed you." Martha turned to her brother. "You're looking good Leo."

He snorted. "Yeah, if anyone asks me to fetch them a drink, I'll swing for him." Rose grinned and looked around at the guests in the room, trying to pick out any potential victims of Leo's discomfort.

"You disappeared last night," Mrs Jones said suddenly, pulling Rose's attention back to the family.

"I just went home," Martha said, sounding much more convincing. Mrs Jones' eyes narrowed and Rose decided it was time to divert attention away from her friend.

"Hi!" she said, beaming up a storm and offering a hand to shake. "How're you doing? I'm Rose."

The woman took her hand and gave it a terse shake, but her lips didn't so much as twitch upwards. "Francine Jones." She looked to Martha then, and her suspicious expression deepened.

Leo, however, did a double take, staring at Rose, then broke out into a charming smile. "Hi," he said, taking her hand to shake. "How're you -"

" _Don't start,_ " Martha groaned as Rose tried to suppress an amused smile. "Leave her alone!"

"Alright, alright!" Leo said, throwing his hands up. "Don't shoot."

Francine's frown hadn't lessened. "Martha's never mentioned you before," she said, glancing at her other two children again. "Has she?"

Tish and Leo shook their heads, looking considerably less concerned than their mother, and Rose said, "Oh, we met in the hospital when those aliens took it to the moon yesterday. We stuck together, and since Martha was coming here tonight she invited me." Martha beamed a false, tense smile and nodded along to the story, and Francine seemed to relax somewhat - but not completely, she noticed.

Francine opened her mouth to retort, and at that moment, Lazarus tapped a fork to the side of his champagne glass and drew the attention of the room to himself. "Ladies and gentlemen," he called. "I am Professor Richard Lazarus and tonight, I am going to perform a miracle." Rose tilted her head at the wording, something about it making her eyes narrow. "It is, I believe, the most important advance since Rutherford split the atom, the biggest leap since Armstrong stood on the moon. Tonight, you will watch and wonder. Tomorrow, you will wake to a world which will be changed forever."

She was sure he was right about _that_ , at least. As he stepped inside the great machine, she tensed up with nerves, holding herself so stiff that she was sure if someone were to bump into her, she would topple like a bowling pin - but she couldn't help it. Everything about this experiment screamed ' _wrong!_ '

She waited with bated breath, then felt it shorten as the whirring of the machine rose to levels that _couldn't_ have been safe. The columns were oscillating around the chamber at faster and faster speeds.

"Something's wrong," she muttered. Was it _supposed_ to be making that much noise? Generating that much heat? She could feel it where she stood, waving over her like the air of a foreign country when you first stepped off a plane.

Martha glanced worriedly at her, seeming to agree with the assessment. "Maybe we should say something."

"To who?" None of the security detail seemed to think anything was out of the ordinary, and maybe that meant it really was just Rose's paranoia sparking to life, but she just - _she didn't think so_.

And then, inevitably, an alarm began to blare, and when the computer controlling the chamber began to spark, she decided it was time she stepped in.

* * *

"It can't be the same guy," Martha said a little later as they watched the young, champagne blond man that was now Lazarus shmooze around the room. "It's impossible. It must be a trick."

Rose shot her an appraising look. "A trick how?"

"Like - like someone hiding under the floor or something!" she said, gesturing at the chamber again. "It's up on a platform, someone could easily have been waiting underneath. They swapped places."

"Why gather all these people together for a trick?" she asked. "Why bother with the light show? Why would it start sparking and smoking if it was all fake? No." She shook her head. "It was real. I just wish it wasn't." Eyeing Lazarus as he and his wife, who now looked decrepit stood next to him, moved off towards the stairs, she asked, "What do you say we find out how?"

Tailing the couple up a few flights of stairs to the office labeled 'Richard Lazarus' was easy enough. She had grown rather adept at sneaking in her two short years since joining the TARDIS and Martha was an excellent study. They made it up without being detected, though as the door to the office swung shut they moved with more caution.

"It's _me_ who made this all possible," they heard Lady Thaw saying on their approach to the office. "This is _my_ triumph, and I will _not_ be denied, not by you, not after everything I've done."

"You backed me because you saw a profit," Lazarus said disdainfully. "Your concern was financial." Rose and Martha pressed themselves up against the doors, ears pressed to the wood and eyes narrowed in concentration.

Lady Thaw said, "Well, you want the money as much as I do. We had a plan." Rose wrinkled her nose and shook her head to herself; it always came down to money, didn't it? "When the device is ready, I'll be rejuvenated, too. We could be rich and young and together."

"You think I'd waste another lifetime on _you?_ " Lazarus asked. Martha visibly cringed at the callousness in his tone and the two girls exchanged another look. She couldn't imagine their marriage had ever been a happy one.

"Did that process make you even more cruel?" Thaw asked, and she couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for the woman, however cold she may have been herself - though, she noted, Thaw hadn't sounded all that cut up about it.

"No, my love. That I learnt from you. You have a gift for it."

"Then you know that I'll protect my involvement in the project. I'm sure Mr Saxon will be interested." There was a sharp gasp then and Rose's spine straightened. "What's going on?"

"It must just be - _ah!_ "

" _What is it?_ "

Lazarus sounded breathless as he said, "I'll be fine in a moment. It's probably just cramp." Then, with a nasty cracking sound that made Rose's skin crawl, they heard him drop to the floor. She and Martha backed up from the doors a little, halfway between wanting to burst into the room to see what was wrong and not wanting to give themselves away.

" _Oh! Richard!_ Is it some sort of seizure?" Thaw cried. "What should I do? I don't understand what's happening. Richard."

That did it; they needed to help. Exchanging a decided nod with Martha, she ripped the door open -

In time to see some inhuman, skeletal creature looming over the terrified woman, open its - _mouth?_ \- and lunge at her in a split second.

They were gone before the thing that used to be Lazarus could notice their presence; Lady Thaw might have been too late to help, but there was an entire party full of people downstairs just waiting to be culled. What could she do though?

As she and Martha ran back down the hallway towards the main reception room, she tried her best to think of something - and then it hit her.

 _Fire alarm._

There was one at the end of the hallway, and she sprinted to it, jamming her elbow into the plastic sheet cover, shattering it and triggering the alarm inside. Immediately, sirens and sprinklers whirred from overhead and the faint sounds of panicked screaming reached them from the ground floor.

"Think that's Lazarus?" Martha asked as they moved to storm the labs. "Or just the alarm?"

"Suppose we'll find out soon," she muttered.

"You know you can be prosecuted for falsely pulling a fire alarm," she added jokingly.

Rose grinned faintly and said, "Maybe when they see the giant scorpion bloke rampaging through the building they'll let me off."

"I still can't believe it though," Martha said as they started down the stairs. "What could make him change into that - that _thing?_ "

"God knows," she said. "It's like that machine warped his DNA, only it was too much for him." Remembering that Spiderman film Mickey had made her watch with him all the time, she said, "He miscalculated. The power he needed was _there_ , obviously - he just couldn't handle it."

Like the Bad Wolf, really. She had absorbed all the power of the time vortex and had used it to her own end, but it had been rapidly killing her. A chill shot down her spine at the comparison, and she tried not to make it again.

They dashed down three staircases until they came out into the reception hall again, just as the guests were finishing evacuating. Water made the tiled floor tricky to traverse and make up had begun running down the faces of some of the women in attendance, but no one noticed these things as they made a mad dash for escape.

"We'd better get out too," Martha called over the blaring alarms. "We don't want to stick around when Lazarus might burst in any second."

"Come on."

They headed outside, Rose sparing the transformation chamber a side eyed glance and quietly cursing it. Some guests had dropped flutes of champagne and glasses of wine in their shock, which made the floor even more dangerous, and she had to concentrate on not just going flat on her back.

As they emerged into the night air, Martha asked, "You don't suppose all that champagne would make it fall over, do you?"

"I wouldn't count on it saving the day for us, no."

Martha huffed out a deep breath. "I can't believe what I just saw. I _can't_ believe…"

Then, before Martha could say another word, the door to the building opened again, and Richard Lazarus stepped outside, face youthful, dressed in a sharp suit and all. He stared around at the gathering of guests shivering out in the cold night, until his eyes landed on Rose and Martha, and they narrowed. He quickly moved on from them, but that look of loathing couldn't be mistaken; he knew they had seen what happened.

She took in the sight with disbelieving eyes as beside her, Martha asked, "But how can he be there? I don't - it doesn't make any sense!"

"What doesn't?" someone behind them asked, and they turned to see Leo had spotted them and come over. "Bloody typical that an event Tish organised ends with a fire alarm being pulled, isn't it?"

"Leo!" Martha exclaimed, checking him over. "You're - are all of you okay? You made it out just fine?" She was looking wildly around for her mum and sister, then relaxed when she spotted the two of them stood some metres away.

"Of course." He frowned and peered more closely at his sister, with a momentary glance at Rose, who barely noticed, so consumed was she with keeping track of Lazarus. He was widely circling the crowd of scared, shivering guests with an unpleasant grimace on his face. "Are you feeling okay?"

"O-of course!" she said, smiling unconvincingly. "The alarm just freaked me out."

"That trip to the moon's got you all turned around, is all," he said. "You'll be thinking everything's aliens for months now."

Well he wasn't _wrong_.

Rose hissed under her breath when, unnoticed, Lazarus managed to slip back into the building, having apparently deduced that there was no fire at all. She had to follow him, because though he had, apparently, changed back into a human, if his scorpion inspired transformation had happened once it could happen again and when it did…

Well, she had just witnessed him staking out his next meal, hadn't she?

"Back in a minute," she said to Martha, then she took off for the doors before her friend could formulate a response.

She was just slipping around one of the security guards, distracted by a woman demanding to know "just what the fuck" was happening, when at the same time, the sounds of ambulance sirens and Martha calling, "I - _hey!_ What the hell are you doing?" reached her.

"Sorry Marth," she mumbled, grimacing. "No time to explain." With that, she was back inside Lazarus Industries and on the scent of the man himself.

* * *

In the end, he wasn't at all hard to track down. Despite currently being human, the man mournfully circling the transformation chamber in the main reception room was hard to miss.

Her heels swished through the thin layer of water, champagne and wine and she took a moment to regret wearing chiffon heels. They were surely ruined by now. But never mind that.

"What are you doing, Lazarus?" she asked, her voice ringing through the now-silent hall. He was turned away from her, but she saw him stiffen at the sound of her voice. "It's not safe. Whatever's happening to you, it could happen again any moment. There're loads of people outside in danger if that happens."

"Well what would you have me do, Miss Tyler?"

Ice water flooded through her. "How do you know my name?"

He finally turned to her then, his pale face a mask of apathy. "I know without doubt that I am not the only one whose body, whose DNA, underwent a change it shouldn't have done. Who are you to lecture me?"

" _H-how do you know about that?_ " she asked, shouting now. Panic laced through her veins and rooted her to the spot, and there was nothing she could do, because how. How the hell did he know?

A cold smile overtook Lazarus' features. "He told me you wouldn't be pleased to know that others are aware of what you did. Tell me, Bad Wolf girl, do you think your Doctor thanked you for ending his life?" Utterly lost for words, Rose couldn't have replied if she wanted to, and at her silence Lazarus sighed to himself and turned back to the chamber. "My greatest creation." He stared at it through wary, exhausted eyes.

Firmly on the defensive now, Rose's jaw unstuck itself and she asked, "Who told you about me? How did you know about Bad Wolf? _Tell me!_ "

The ghost of a grin appeared on his face. "Oh, wouldn't _you_ like to know."

She was gearing up to interrogate him when the sound of the fire engine outside reminded her that there were bigger things going on than her, and she tamped down her fury with no small amount of difficulty. "Look, if you don't do something now, innocent people are going to _die_ , Lazarus."

"A consequence of progress."

"You call that _mutation progress?_ "

He smiled at her, but it was utterly flat. "I wouldn't have expected _you_ to understand."

She flushed with shame at that and tried to formulate a response, but she didn't need to bother; someone was walking up to them. "Look mate," Martha said, her tone harsh and angry. She wondered how long her friend had been listening. "Rose might not be a rocket scientist but she's smart in other ways. Ways you obviously _aren't_ , so I'd think twice before you dismissed her."

Lazarus' smile turned condescending. "I think I've heard of you, too. Martha Jones. Your sister did a wonderful job with the party, didn't she?" Behind him, a banner came unattached from the wall and fell to the ground with a loud scraping noise.

Martha pursed her lips. "The firemen are outside," she said. "Unless you want to change in front of them and have half of London's emergency services swooping down on you, I'd think about reversing the changes."

"There _is_ no reversal," he snarled. "It doesn't exist."

"Seriously?" Rose asked, almost wanting to laugh. "After all this, you didn't think about what to do if something went wrong?"

"Nothing was supposed to go wrong," he said, sounding pained as he forced the words out through gritted teeth.

"Doesn't mean you don't _prepare_ for something going wrong," she said, then she stopped and frowned. He was groaning and hunching in on himself. Dread seeped into her bones. "Lazarus? Are you okay?"

He never answered, but he didn't have to. Even before the transformation was complete, Rose and Martha were running for the stairs, ready to lead the monster away from the unassuming crowds gathered outside.

* * *

"What are we supposed to do?" Martha cried as they led the scorpion creature on a wild goose chase around the corridors of Lazarus Industries.

"I don't know! We have to stop him somehow - knock him out, or - or -"

"Kill him?"

Her instinctive response to the suggestion was to balk and deny it, over and over because the Doctor didn't kill. He found other ways to solve the problem, and that's what she would do. Maybe if they could subdue him, she could get in contact with UNIT! They could do something, she was sure, or maybe she could use the TARDIS to find a hospital somewhere that could reverse the change. There had to be someplace, somewhere in the universe that dealt with DNA stuff, right?

But the more she thought and tried to think of alternative solutions, the more ludicrous they sounded, even to her own idealistic ears.

" _Rose?_ " Martha cried. "We kill him?"

With a heavy heart, she nodded. "If we have to, we kill him."

With a deafening roar and crash the doors behind them were ripped off their hinges as the Lazarus creature continued its pursuit of them, pincer jaws snapping and limbs cracking in badly fitting joints.

Bolting the doors to the stairwell shut behind them, Rose tried to formulate a plan. Maybe a good fall would - _deal with_ him. If they could lead him up to the roof and trick him into going over the edge…

But that idea was cut short as the doors one flight above their heads crashed open. "How did he get above us?" Martha cried as they turned tail and headed back down.

" _No idea!_ "

They quickly found out though; a crumbling, sparking mess of concrete and wiring hung down in front of them when they stepped back into the corridor they had just left. Lazarus had burst up through the ceiling.

That was determination if she ever saw it, and the thought that the creature was capable of such strength made her shiver. The sight of the electrical wires gave her an idea though. It was _awful_ and she already felt guilt for it, but desperate times called for desperate measures and they needed to do _something_.

"I've got an idea," she said breathlessly as they clambered unsteadily over the mess left behind by Lazarus' work. Continuing down the corridor, she said, "We need to lead him back to the room with the chamber."

The firemen's hoses had been brought in with them in anticipation of a fire to put out, and though they had been moved out of the main room as the firemen themselves went searching for the disaster, more water had joined the small sea gathered on the floor. Good.

"Help me rip out the wires," she said to Martha, running to the chamber. "We need them live and exposed."

Martha, of course, put two and two together. "We're electrocuting him?"

She couldn't bring herself to confirm it out loud, but she managed a nod as they grimly got down to work. Lazarus was approaching; they could hear him and feel him in the shaking of the building.

A fireman burst back into the reception room, hose in hands and scowl in place. " _Oi, you two!_ " he shouted. "What's going on in here?"

Before they could answer Lazarus burst into the room, answering more effectively than they ever could have, and the man's jaw dropped open.

"We need water!" Rose shouted, drawing his attention back to her. "You fire hose - _please!_ "

He understood what she meant, because he dropped it to the ground and dashed for the front doors. Lazarus never noticed, so caught up was he with the sight of she and Martha desecrating his great creation from the safe vantage point within the thing itself. He roared and charged them as finally the wires were ripped out and left to dangle in the water.

The fire hose was turned on and more water joined that which was already there, flooding the room rapidly then, and the sea sparked with danger -

As the creature that was Lazarus leapt at Rose and Martha, not noticing anything but them and his machine, his pride and joy. He landed in the water…

And roared and flailed as electricity shot through him in thousands of volts, finally collapsing to the ground from where he moved no more.

The body of the creature seemed to smoke where it lay and the sight made her feel sick. It made her not want to be in her own skin, and the creeping horror of what he had done, what she had done, was overwhelming.

"Well done," Martha said shakily. "That was pretty quick thinking."

"Yeah," she said, but she couldn't get out anything more than that.

Richard Lazarus was dead, and Rose Tyler had killed him.

* * *

She had at first had at first felt considerably guilty for dragging the fire services fire services out on false pretense, but it had been the only plan for a rapid evacuation that she could think of. She doubted people would have left on their own, not without proof of the danger, and by the time they _got_ that proof it would have been too late. As it turned out, the fire services being there probably saved them all.

As it turned out, the fire services being there probably saved them all, Rose and Martha included, because she didn't know about her friend, but she certainly hadn't felt like being stranded amid a sea of electricity for hours with Lazarus body.

"I'm heading back to the TARDIS," she said to Martha. "I'll wait for you if you want a while with your family."

"Not sure I do, thanks," she said, staring with a small grimace at her gathered relatives.

Feeling a spike in her chest, she said, "Earlier, when I said my mum was dead… I was lying." Martha turned back to her, eyes blowing wide. "She's still alive, just in a place where I can never speak to her again. Just like the Doctor, and my mate Mickey."

"I didn't know," Martha said. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she said. "Point is, even though your family can drive you mad sometimes, it's always worth going to be with them for a while longer, even just five minutes, 'cause you never know when the universe is gonna take them away from you forever."

Martha stared at her for some seconds more, then said, "If you stay parked at my flat, I won't be long. An hour, maybe…"

"Take your time," she said, smiling softly. "I would if I could." Martha nodded, rubbing her hand down Rose's arm for a moment before she turned and walked back to her mother, who appeared surprised to see her again.

Staring at the ambulance as it drove away, the body of Lazarus beginning to grow cold within, Rose wondered whether that would happen to her. Lazarus had meddled with power he didn't understand, done things to himself that he couldn't control… and look what had happened to him.

If she was right in her suspicions about Bad Wolf, Rose was in serious danger, and the worst part of it was that this time, the monster after her blood might already be inside it.


	8. An Old Friend at Roald Dahl Plass

**AN: Glad to have had this finished! I've been badly sick with the flu since Monday and completely lacking in energy, so I was worried that I wouldn't have it in me to get** _ **anything**_ **done.**

* * *

Rose and Martha ate dinner together in the TARDIS galley, a tired quiet overtaking them. The afternoon had been a long one; studying for medical exams and inter-universal travel theories really took it out of you. Not to forget, the events of Lazarus' party were still catching up to her; she had killed him. Planned to kill him, at that.

She didn't know whether there would have been a way to subdue him - a way of ending the night without Lazarus' blood being spilled, but it still had her shaken to the core and again made her think of her mother's warning on that awful day; that one day, a woman who used to be Rose Tyler would walk the surface of some distant, unknown planet, unrecognisable to those who had once loved her.

The thought made her feel even sicker, and so pushing her empty plate away, she declared, "I need to let the TARDIS refuel before we go anywhere else. Quick trip to Cardiff should do it."

Martha appeared surprised but she never said anything, or if she did Rose didn't notice, because she was too busy convincing herself that nothing was wrong. They would land in Cardiff and everything would be okay when she confirmed that nothing in her had changed. She was still the same old Rose, if not more grown up, and she would prove it to herself.

"That's right," she said under her breath to herself as she moved around the console at a speed still classified as 'snail's pace' by the Doctor's standards, but as 'top speed' by her own. She was getting better, it was just taking a really, _really_ long time.

Landing the TARDIS in Cardiff, at the Roald Dahl Plass to be specific, she called out to Martha who joined her a moment later, having already been on her way.

"Won't take long," she said with a smile, slipping on a cosy hoodie. "Just take the time to sit back and enjoy… Cardiff."

"Enjoy _Cardiff?_ " Martha repeated.

Rose didn't dignify that with a response as they stepped out into the bracing Wales air and took in the ordinary sights, of ordinary people going about their ordinary days and lives. This was a world she had given up for good when she chose to remain in the TARDIS after the Doctor's - after he was sent to the parallel universe. That didn't mean she couldn't stay connected to it though.

" _Rose!_ " The shout was achingly familiar - a ghost's voice reaching out to her from across the plaza.

Jaw dropped, she turned to see _Jack_. Captain Jack Harkness, running for her. "Oh my god."

"Who's that?" Martha asked, looking concerned between she and the strange man. Rose was too stunned to offer an answer.

He came to a stop in front of her, breathing more heavily than usual, and then stared at her like he was trying to take her in.

She smiled weakly. "Hi Jack."

At that, he let out a happy yelling shout and threw himself at her, wrapping her in a hug strong enough to lift her up from the floor. First thought, honestly? _Jack was ripped_. Not that he was ever a weakling, but his muscles were definitely bigger now. Rose, for her part, had to fight down a wave of panic as her confusion lashed out, meeting another confusing force that she couldn't quite pinpoint. How? _How was he here?_

"You two know each other?" Martha asked, raising an eyebrow and breaking them from their own little world.

Rose stepped back and offered her friend a sheepish smile. "Sorry, Martha, this is Jack. He's an old friend of mine."

"You can say that again," he said with a smile that suggested an inside joke only he was in on. "Now, who's your friend here?" His smile turned charming and all-too-familiar, and Rose grinned.

" _Leave it._ "

"What, you're not _jealous_ are you, Rosie?"

Martha's smile turned amused. " _Rosie?_ "

"In your _dreams_ , Harkness." Then, to Martha, "It's just a silly nickname."

"Why Rosie, you're always in my dreams, and who're you to talk about silly, Miss Barrage Balloon?"

"Miss _what?_ "

"So where are you set up now?" she asked quickly.

The grin on Jack's face turned shit-eating. "Deflection is a coward's tactic, Rose. As for where I'm based, well…" He trailed off, glanced off to the side at the Roald Dahl Plass Hub, and looked back at her. "Let me introduce you."

* * *

"This whole place, I did in - well, in your memory, actually," he said, speaking candidly but looking distinctly uncomfortable. "At Canary Wharf, after everything that went down there with the Cybermen and the Daleks, they put up a remembrance list. Your name was on it."

A chill swept down her spine. "What, seriously?"

"Yeah, well, like I said, it's good to see you." His stare penetrated for a few long seconds before he continued on to say, "You're _supposed_ to be dead, you know."

"Yeah, well, so are you."

"That so?" he asked, tone remaining deceptively light despite the look in his eyes that had just appeared. He glanced around them and then back to her. "Come on then, where is he? I know he's not sending you to do his dirty work for him."

There was no question who he was talking about - to Rose, at least. "Who's 'he'?" Martha asked, looking like she could guess.

"The Doctor." Jack paused and his brow furrowed. "Where's he got to?"

"He's… he's not here."

"What do you mean _'not here'?_ "

"What do you think?" she asked, her voice raising and tone sharpening to a point.

He held up his hands defensively for a second, then dropped them, expression cautious. "The Doc's gone?"

"Yeah." The air hung heavy between them for a while. Neither knew how to continue, and on the outskirts of it all, Martha certainly didn't.

"God dammit," he said eventually, huffing an unconvincing laugh. "Never really thought I'd hear someone say that. What uh - what happened?"

And for what felt like the one hundredth time since that awful day, Rose told the inside story of the Battle of Canary Wharf.

That other, unfamiliar feeling from earlier re-emerged and now she had the time to examine it. She didn't know what it was, but it was nagging almost painfully in the forefront of her mind. Something about Jack that now seemed… different. Not wrong, different. Almost _calling out to her_. Magnetising her to him.

"Have I mentioned how I wanted to kill him?" They sat around a table in Jack's hub drinking tea, on she and Martha's part, coffee on Jack's. At the intrusion to her searching thoughts though, she blinked several times, confused, then realised Jack was talking to her, and shook her head.

"No, you haven't - you wanted to _what?_ "

"After the GameStation. He left me behind." Now, reliving the memory, Jack's tone had turned completely flat. Martha, sipping her tea on the opposite side of the table, choked at the statement. "I was running back to the TARDIS when I heard it dematerialise."

"He wouldn't." Her tone was resolute and unchanging; after everything that had happened, she would not believe this about the man she loved.

"He did."

"Sorry," Martha said, putting her mug down. "You said this Doctor bloke _abandoned_ you somewhere?" She looked at Rose then, whose fists were beginning to clench. "All this time I've spent with you, and you've been going on and on about how brilliant the Doctor was and trying to bring him back - and he just abandoned one of his friends on some _planet?_ "

"No, Martha," she snapped, glaring at Jack now. He met her gaze evenly, openly, and the honesty she saw in it made her sick. "He _wouldn't._ "

"But he did. You weren't there Rose, so you don't know, but the last thing I remembered after waking up was the sound of the TARDIS leaving me behind in the year two hundred, one thousand." So many different things were fighting for prominence in her mind that Rose couldn't formulate a response, but Martha had the silence covered.

"What do you mean 'after waking up'?"

His brow furrowed. "That's - that's just the thing. I don't really know what happened to me on that station. I'd been cornered by a group of Daleks and obviously, there was no way out of that." Rose's ears pricked up, and she looked at Jack through new eyes. "What actually happened though - well, I'm not sure on. They killed me, and then I woke up."

Something in Rose called out then - that weird feeling she had around Jack specifically screaming in her mind. Like a part of her knew what he was talking about.

"They killed you and _then you woke up?_ " Martha repeated.

"That's right," he said ruefully, sitting back. "I died, there was this light in my mind, and I woke up." The look on his face suggested there was more to the story than that, but Rose couldn't bring herself to care in the moment.

"There was a light?" she asked. "What does that mean? What sort of light?"

He frowned, concerned. "I don't really know. It was just sort of… there, in my head. All yellow -"

"Or gold?" she asked, pitch rising. Martha's eyebrows rose at that and she too faced Jack with heightened interest.

"Sure, I guess it could have been gold." He shrugged carelessly. "What does it matter?" When he spotted the look she and Martha exchanged, he sat up straighter. "What does the light mean?"

Rose was utterly breathless, but managed to answer. "It's - it was _me_ , Jack. That light was _me_."

"What does _that_ mean?"

The truth was main the subject of Rose's warring thoughts recently. That the Bad Wolf might be stirring in her again terrified her, and she had to admit that her was every day diverting more from it's original goal; to bring the Doctor home. The more time passed, the more she thought about _it_.

With a deep, steadying breath, she said, "That night, on the GameStation, the Doctor did send me away. Made it so the TARDIS couldn't bring me back - so she couldn't do anything, actually. You two were in two hundred, one thousand and I was in two thousand and five with no way of getting back to help you! He didn't tell me what he was doing, obviously." A familiar spring of bitterness sprouted up in her mind at that but she didn't let on.

"He always liked his secrets," Jack nodded with a sad smile.

"Yeah, well I wasn't happy so I tried to get back to him - you both. Mum and Mickey both helped me out, but it was mum who got it in the end. Borrowed this massive rubbish truck from a 'mate' of hers and we used it to force open that uh -" She wrinkled her nose. "Do you remember that day with the Slitheen in Cardiff, when the TARDIS opened up and turned her back into an egg?"

Martha's eyebrows shot up at that, but it was Jack she was focusing on. He gave an uncertain nod. "How could I forget?"

"We opened it up again, with the truck. I looked into the heart -"

"Rose, you _what?_ "

"And then after that I don't remember anything. I know I became something called the Bad Wolf, but it's all just… golden light, until I wake up in the TARDIS and the Doctor's there, going on about all the stuff he wanted us to do together and how he never would with 'this face', and…" She looked off to the side, tears welling up in her eyes for the first time in weeks. "I _killed_ him, Jack. No one's supposed to look into the heart of the TARDIS, for a reason. But I did, and to stop it killing me, he took it into himself, and he _died_."

A dull silence overtook the hub. Neither of her companions appeared to know what to say and were exchanging loaded looks, but Rose couldn't bring herself to care. After all this time, the full truth of that night had come spilling out. Her mother's fears had been founded but late; Rose had already become something inhuman, long before Jackie Tyler had the time to express her fears.

"Rosie," Jack began, before cutting himself off. He searched for words for a few seconds, jaw flapping uselessly before he settled on a course of action. "I thought the Doctor was trapped in this parallel world. How can both these stories be true?"

She was still tense, but made her shoulders relax somewhat. "When he was fatally hurt he had this thing - this, like, Time Lord trick, that let him cheat death. All the cells in his body were dying so he -"

"Regenerated?" Jack interrupted.

She was surprised, but still managed to nod. "Yeah. How did you -"

"There were always rumours back on the Boeshane Peninsula, about the Time Lords. About the things they could do - the things they manipulated their own DNA for. Never believed it all myself, but I guess it's true, huh?"

"Well, the regeneration stuff was, yeah. He turned into this - this _completely_ new man, right in front of me, and it's him who got trapped."

Everything went quiet for another moment. "Damn Rosie."

"Yeah."

"He could turn himself into a new person when he was dying?" Martha asked, looking appalled. "But that isn't right! It goes against the laws of nature."

"The Time Lords were never renowned for their respect of nature's laws," Jack said dryly. "But the Doctor -" He broke off and sighed. "Well, despite everything, the Doctor was a good man. Made me who I am now, you might say." With a grin and a wink, he drained the last of his coffee.

Rose shook her head, a smile trying to fight its way onto her face. "What am I gonna do with you, eh?"

"Whatever you want, Rosie." He winked again and she groaned, turning away as he laughed.

"But if you were trapped in the year one hundred thousand -" Martha began.

"Two hundred, one thousand."

"Whatever. How can you be here, now?"

He leveled at Martha a dry look. "Time travel, baby. Ever heard of it?" Then, a though seemed to occur to him. "Hey, if the Doc's gone how did I see the TARDIS out there on the plaza?"

"I landed her there," Rose said.

For a few seconds he was too stunned to answer. "I mean - so you can pilot the TARDIS now?"

"Sure," she shrugged. "You know, read the manual and so forth. Plus, I'm pretty sure she's been helping out."

He blew out a breath. "That's quite the tale you have there. I'm sorry." She nodded but couldn't think of anything to say in response. "I have to ask though, knowing what I do now…" She looked back, eyebrows raised promptingly. "Could you do it again?"

" _What?_ "

"Become Bad Wolf again? Reverse whatever it was that brought me back to life?"

Panic swelled in her chest and she said, "No! No, I couldn't."

He looked disappointed, and like he wanted to say something else, when a door behind them opened and a young man in a suit and tie stepped inside, stopping short when he saw them.

"Er…"

"Ianto," Jack said bracingly, getting to his feet with a wide smile on his face, like he hadn't just been asking her to unleash an all-powerful time goddess. "Allow me to introduce Rose Tyler and Martha Jones. Good friends of mine." He said this last bit with a wink back at Martha, who knew by now to just roll her eyes.

Ianto sighed. "Oh god, not more 'special friends'. Jack, honestly -"

"Not like that, Ianto! They are special ladies, who deserve the best our fine hub has to offer." With an almost unnoticeable glance at Martha, he said, "Perhaps a tour, for Dr Jones-to-be? Maybe we can convince her to come work with us once she's finished her degree."

Ianto looked exasperated but he agreed. As he toured Martha around the compound, Jack and Rose remained behind, talking in low tones.

"Jack, I couldn't. I shouldn't! No one's supposed to hold the time vortex in their head like that. It even killed the Doctor we knew. Killed him, Jack."

"No, no, I understand," he said, though it appeared to pain him to say so. "I just asked because - well your bringing me back to life as Bad Wolf, great as it was at first…" He trailed off and looked to be warring with himself over what to say. "It worked a little too well."

"What does that mean?"

"It means, Rosie - it means… I'm over one hundred years old." Everything he said from that point on may as well have not been said at all. It was like she had been plunged into ice water and was trying to listen to him shout for her from the surface. Nothing was coherent. None of it went in. _What did he mean, he was over a hundred years old?_

"I woke up and managed to piece things back together, so I used my old vortex manipulator to get back to Earth, only I misjudged the time zone a little, ended up living through two world wars waiting for the Twenty First century to hit."

"I - I don't -"

"I can't die, Rosie. Not ever, as far as I can tell. Even when I do, I just come back. That's why I asked you about Bad Wolf, about using it again. I'd just - I'd like to think I'll be able to pass on one day, you know?"

She did know, but she was too stunned to express this. Jack was - and _she_ had -

She had done this to him. Her reckless rescue mission had cost one Doctor his life, and robbed Jack Harkness of his death. When they first locked eyes across the plaza she had been so happy, but now, watching her old friend speak so candidly of his apparent immortality, all she felt was a hollow sickness. This trip to Cardiff had been meant to cement her innate humanness. It wasn't working out as she had hoped.

For some reason though, Jacks' revelation had sparked something inside her, and that new feeling, that magnetised feeling, was prompting her to start talking.

"Something's happening to me, Jack. I don't know what it is yet - well no, I do. I think it's Bad Wolf. I don't think it's gone from me completely." And at his concerned, intrigued look, she regaled to him the tales of her recent adventures, of her strange draw to him, and of every suspicion that the Bad Wolf wasn't as dead as it should be. "I think it's still there, inside me, like it's _waiting_ for something."

"If that's true, this feeling you have around me now might not be so out of nowhere," he said. "Bad Wolf brought _me, specifically_ back to life; I didn't see anyone else who died on the GameStation getting back up to stretch their legs, at least. If it's still there, still inside you in some way, then it makes sense for it to recognise me, reach out to me." An intensely curious look overcame his face as he continued. "If Bad Wolf _is_ still there, then I might even suggest that it's waking up."


	9. Daleks in Manhattan

**AN: I've been revising constantly for my driving theory test, which was on Thursday (I passed!) so most of this was written over Friday and Saturday. Writing for my own, original book has gone back into motion since I began this story (I think it helped cure my writer's block!), so I'm focusing on two stories at the same time.**

 **Apologies if anything comes off as rushed, but I was happy with it so here it is.**

* * *

Hours later, when Ianto had gone home and the sun had set for the day, Rose and Martha prepared to head back to the TARDIS. She had told her friend to go on ahead; she needed a quick word with Jack.

"Can I convince you?" she asked, smiling at him. "Quick trip with me and Martha?"

He sighed heavily, grinning from ear to ear as he looked about himself. "You know I can never say no to you, Rosie. Just one thing, though." She nodded and watched as he plucked a post-it note from the desk, scribbling something on it quickly.

"What's that?" she asked as he recapped the pen.

With a smug grin, he held it out to her. "Today's date and time. Now you have no excuse for getting me back late."

* * *

Jack stepped out of the TARDIS first, into the blustery winds of the world outside. He had observed her piloting with close, watchful eyes and seemed to be thinking of something, though gentle prodding revealed none of his inner thoughts, and Rose didn't want to push, so she let it drop.

"Come on then," she said to Martha, who was staring at the doors Jack had just left from with barely concealed anticipation. "Lets see where we are."

Martha laughed and ran for the outside. Rose followed at a more leisurely pace and a smile broke out on her face at the sound of her friends' pleased exclamations.

"Now, this is what I call a trip!" Jack declared, looking around with a beaming smile. "New York City. Perfect."

Martha span around in a circle and then jolted to a stop. "Is that - oh my God. That's the Statue of Liberty!"

"Well, yeah," Jack said. They both ignored him.

"And there's the Empire State Building!" Martha continued. "I wonder what year it is."

"What year was the building finished?" Rose asked, because it clearly wasn't yet.

"Nineteen Thirty One," Jack said, wandering around in a small circle.

"It's Nineteen Thirty now," Martha said, plucking up a stray newspaper. "First of November." She looked back up at the building. "It's mad, this is. I'll never get used to it."

"Ah, don't worry," Rose said. "I never have either." Then, a grin came to her face. "Fancy a closer look?"

* * *

"So, America Nineteen Twenty Nine, the Great Depression hits and the entire country finds itself unemployed." Jack was monologuing as they headed in what they hoped was the right direction. "People from all walks of life are losing their homes and morale is low as ever. In the middle of it all, sits the Empire State Building."

"What a backdrop to depression," Rose muttered. She wondered whether the building had cost the people at all, and then kicked herself for not being more genned up on American history.

"So tell me," Martha said, looking down at the newspaper again. "What's Hooverville?"

Jack glanced over and then launched into a speech about Central Park and the thousands of people who had flocked there upon losing everything. Rose, meanwhile, looked down at what had caught Martha's attention in the first place.

 **Hooverville Mystery Deepens** , read the headline. She frowned and then started in on the article. When she was done, ignoring the prompt to continue reading on page seven, Jack was still talking.

"We're talking hundreds of people at any one time, all taking shelter in -"

"Sorry, Jack," she said, cutting across him. "But I think there might be something we need to look into here." She pointed to the article and Jack, noticing it for the first time, soon agreed.

Hooverville itself wasn't hard to find. Just look for Central Park, or, conversely, look for the gathering of homeless people all crammed in together against the biting night air. The sight, even from a distance, was sickening.

What was worse though, she thought upon approach, was the man in the spats and the sharp business suit, stood before the desperate people of New York and gathering together a group who were willing to go down into the sewers of the city.

"What's the pay?" called a man who appeared to be the leader.

There was the slightest of pauses. "One dollar." Taking advantage of the desperate.

Rose's fists clenched, but the three of them hung back, not sure now was the time to be spotted. A glance at her two companions told her they were equally unhappy, though.

It was only natural, then, that when Diagoras called for volunteers theirs were the first three hands in the air (Martha's after a short delay, but she could hardly be blamed for that). Hooverville's leader followed shortly after, and so did the young man who stood at his side. Five of them.

If Diagoras had any misgivings about sending two women down to do this work he never voiced them (which, given the time period they were in, might have been a sign of something sinister in itself). He just took what he could get and led them all off.

The two Hoovervillians watched Rose, Martha and Jack with closed off, guarded expressions but neither spoke until they were down in the sewers, and Diagoras was strolling off back to safety.

Rose had the oddest feeling he was involved in the disappearances. Proving it was the key. Hopefully she would have the time to figure out a plan, as they wandered the sewers of New York looking for this mysterious collapse.

The Hooverville leader, Solomon, took in Jack's coat and a subdued expression overcame his face. "You a military man?" When Jack indicated that this was the case, Solomon shook his head but said nothing. "We've got people from every level of society in Hooverville, Miss Jones," he said. "Doctors, lawyers…" His eyes flicked back to Jack. "Servicemen. Everyone ends up at Hooverville in the end, these days."

"But all these people going missing," Rose said, "I mean, someone must be looking into it! If not the police, aren't there any detectives?"

Solomon's look turned somewhat condescending. "All the detectives are _at Hooverville_ , Miss Tyler. What are they going to do?"

"What is that?" They all jolted to a stop at Jack's voice, ripping through the stale air of the tunnel. He sounded alarmed, and was staring off at something a few feet away.

Rose followed his gaze, and wrinkled her nose. "What the hell?" she muttered, moving towards it. Martha and Jack were hot on her heels. Solomon and Frank hung back, but she hardly blamed them.

"That is - well that's just…" Martha trailed off, lost for words as the three of them gathered around the thing on the floor, crouched low for a good look.

"Looks like a brain," Rose said. "But it can't be…"

"Can't it?" Jack asked with a humourless laugh. "Old Diagoras doesn't exactly come across as the honest type, and men have been going missing. He could be putting people in for all sorts of fates, and it could be happening down here."

"Great," Martha said. "Love a stroll into a lion's den."

Rose was only half paying attention to them, busy searching her pockets for something to safely pick the brain thing up with. She needed to invest in a packet of latex gloves at some point. Plucking out a tissue, she lifted the jelly-like thing from the ground, choking back a gag of disgust when sticky residue was left behind.

"Oh, that is _rank_ ," she said. It reminded her of something she had seen before though, so she wanted to get as close a look at it as she could. Bringing it slightly closer to her eye, she saw Martha, out of the corner of her eye, fighting between her natural curiosity and revulsion.

"Remind me not to touch you until after you've washed your hands," Jack said.

"Well there go my plans for tonight," she said, grinning. He met it with one of his own and winked.

"Right," Martha said, rolling her eyes, "anything helpful to add, Jack? Or are you just gonna whine?"

"Okay, hissy mother," he said, holding his hands up before moving in for a closer look too. "Can't say I've ever seen something quite like this before," he muttered.

"I think I have though," Rose said. He looked up to meet her eyes. "No idea where. It's just - vaguely familiar."

He hummed. "Okay. Think on that Rosie. Wonder if I have anything that'll help." He began digging through his coat pockets as from behind, Solomon piped up.

"So what exactly are we looking at there?" he asked.

"Don't look good, does it?" Frank asked with a nervous laugh.

Martha shot them a reassuring smile. "It's probably nothing." _Hah_. At least she had a great bedside manner.

Jack had pulled out a weird scanner and was holding it up to the brain, just out of sight of the two Hoovervillians. He was reading the results and his frown was deepening by the second. Rose's heart began to sink.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Says the planet of origin was Skaro," he muttered gruffly.

At that, her heart dropped like a stone. " _Skaro?_ " she repeated.

"What's Skaro?" Martha asked, only to go ignored for the moment.

"You're not serious," she said. "Show me."

He did, and she read the results back, beginning to feel sick as she dropped the brain to the floor, where it impacted with a splat. _It couldn't be them_.

"What does Skaro mean?" Martha asked.

"It means Daleks," Jack said grimly. He tucked the scanner away and got to his feet, turning to Solomon and Frank with an equally grim look on his face. "Fellas, I hate to say it, but we need to get out of here."

* * *

Before they could make it so much as five minutes back down the tunnel, an animalistic squeal ripped the air, bringing their group to a sharp halt.

" _What the hell was that?_ " Solomon asked.

"Hello?" Frank called, voice echoing into the darkness

"Frank," Solomon said warningly, at the same time as Martha shushed him.

"But what if it's one of the folk gone missing?" he asked. "You'd be scared and half mad down here on your own!" After what she had seen so far, Rose wasn't convinced any of the missing people were still alive, but she wasn't going to tell them that. "Heck, we ain't seen no bodies down here. Maybe they just got lost."

"Let's just keep moving, people," Jack said, wariness edging more clearly into his tone.

Another round of squeals echoed around them. "I know I never heard nobody make a sound like that," Solomon said.

"I said _, let's go_."

"Where's it coming from?" Frank asked, swinging his torch around. "Sounds like there's more than one."

"It doesn't matter because we're getting out of here," Jack said, marching over and taking Frank by the arm.

Despite his spindly build, the young lad was able to yank himself free, glaring at Jack. "Not while there might be people here who need -" He cut himself off, because at that exact moment his torch beam swung over a figure huddled into a corner. They visibly shivered, and any thoughts of Daleks, or of letting Jack have her leave fled Rose's mind.

"Hello?" she called, stepping towards them. "Are you okay?" No answer.

"Rosie," Jack said lowly.

"My name's Rose," she continued, speaking slowly so as not to startle them. "Are you okay? Can you tell me your name?"

"Are you lost?" Frank asked gently, joining her. "Can you understand me? I've been thinking about folk lost down here."

"Careful," she whispered to him, laying a tentative hand on his arm. "They might be violent."

"Heck, who cares?" he asked. "I might be too, if I were lost down here."

"Even so, I wouldn't want anything to - to happen…" She drifted off as the figure looked up, and she saw its face.

It was a pig man.

"Oh, what the hell?" Solomon said behind them, softly, but loudly enough that his voice carried. The pigman winced.

"What are you?" she murmured, quietly enough that only Frank heard her. He shot her a look and edged closer to the strange man.

Solomon's distress rang clear as he asked, "Is that, eh - some kind of carnival mask?"

Rose pursed her lips. "No. No, it's real." Refocusing on the pigman, she softened her features and crouched slightly. "Hello, my name's Rose. I'm here to help. Can you tell me who did this to you?"

"Uh, Rose?" It was Martha, and she sounded too nervous to be ignored. "I think we need to move."

She turned around, and froze at the sight of the herd coming right their way. "Oh. Well that's no good." Swallowing, she backed away from them. The pigmen followed.

"They're following you," Jack said.

"Are they? I never noticed." The pigmen were still advancing. "Okay. Everyone, I think now's the time to run."

* * *

Frank had almost been a goner, had it not been for Jack's razor sharp speed, considerable strength, and his slight bias towards, quote, "sweet pieces of ass". He never told Frank this because he didn't want to scare the young man more than he already had been that night, and quite frankly, Rose wished he had treated her with the same consideration when he later regaled to her his tale.

They had barely a moment to rejoice at all of them making it up through the manhole safely however, because a moment later, a gun was being pointed at their heads.

"Alright, then." Her voice was high pitched. "Hands in the air and no funny business. Now tell me, you schmucks, what have you done with Laszlo?"

They all just stood there for a moment. "Who's Laszlo?" Martha finally asked, utterly bewildered.

The woman stared at them long and hard. "Follow me," she said, and considering she had a gun they had very little choice, though Jack looked like he wanted to draw his own They followed her to a nearby dressing room where she began to speak. "Laszlo's my boyfriend. Or _was_ my boyfriend until he disappeared two weeks ago. No letter, no goodbye, no nothing. And I'm not stupid. I know some guys are just pigs but not my Laszlo. I mean, what kind of guy asks you to meet his mother before he vamooses?"

"Listen um…it might just help if you, ya know, put that down," Martha said, eyeing the gun.

"Huh? Oh, sure." She tossed it on the bed, and everyone flinched. "Oh come on, it's not _real_. It's just a prop. It was either that or a spear."

"So what do you think happened to Laszlo?" Martha asked gently. Again, the bedside manner, it was good.

"I wish I knew." She sounded close to tears.

"What's your name?" Rose asked suddenly, snapping out of her trance. The woman blinked at her, surprised.

"Tallulah."

"Tallulah," Rose repeated.

"Three Ls and an H."

"…Right. Anyway. We're going to try and find Laszlo, I promise. But there are other people missing too. More disappearing every night. I'd bet it's connected."

"And there are creatures," Solomon cut in. "Such creatures."

"What do you mean _creatures?_ "

Rose and Jack exchanged a glance, and a heavily edited explanation began.

* * *

"Jack said Daleks," Martha said a little while later, as all around them showgirls dashed about getting ready for their performance. Rose hadn't seen so many sparkles since Shareen went as a sexy witch for Halloween. "And you said once that they were some of the aliens there at Canary Wharf…"

She smiled flatly. "The bronze pepper pots with whisks for guns."

Martha blanched and asked, " _They're_ what he thinks that brain thing was?"

"The real Daleks are these flesh creatures," she said. "The shells are just that; shells for them to move about in, and, you know…"

"Kill people with."

"Yeah."

"Great."

"Yeah." She saw Solomon moving about in an unsettled manner out of the corner of her eye, and frowned. "Would you mind checking in on Tallulah for me? See if you can find out anything else about this missing boyfriend?"

Martha agreed and left to do just that, and once she was gone, Rose approached the Hooverville leader.

"Everything alright?" she asked.

"I got to get back to Hooverville," he said. "With these creatures on the loose, we got to protect ourselves. Ain't no one else going to help us."

Rose nodded. She wanted these people as far away from the Daleks as possible. "Good luck."

"I hope you know what you're doing, for all our sakes."

"So do I," she muttered as the man left.

Jack came up to her side. "Everything okay?"

"Fine. Solomon's going back to Hooverville. He thinks the people there are in danger, so he's gone to rally them."

"Smart man," he muttered. "But moving on. We might have a bigger problem on our hands than we thought." Before she could ask him what he meant, he had reached into his coat pocket and withdrew the Dalek waste.

" _Ugh_ ," she said. "And you complained about me picking it up with a _tissue_."

He ignored her. "Further scans suggest it's artificial. Genetically engineered."

"Definitely Daleks then," she said. "Who in this time period would be messing around with genetics like this?"

"You might be surprised," he said, not looking very happy. "But still. There's no way it's a coincidence that the Daleks would pop up in old New York and the genetic experiment waste we find _not_ be down to them."

"So the Daleks are running experiments in the sewers in Great Depression New York," Rose muttered. "Lovely."

A voice from behind interrupted them. "Er, excuse me?" It was Frank, still looking very pale but otherwise no worse for wear.

Rose smiled kindly. "You alright? You must be shaken up to hell."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," he said with a nervous laugh. Then, he looked at Jack, who looked slightly tetchy at having been interrupted. "You saved my life tonight, sir. I wanted to thank you for that."

"Any time," Jack said neutrally. He turned back to the Dalek waste and spoke no more. Rose was surprised by his dismissal but if the young man was offended, he didn't show it.

"And Rose?" Frank glanced around them and said in a low tone, "I don't mean to intrude on other folk's business, but I - I couldn't help overhearing something your military friend said." At her prompting look, he went on. "Something back there, in the tunnel, about that brain thing we found. He said 'planet of origin'. Now what's that all about?"

Before she could answer, an almighty commotion roused them from their quiet corner backstage and they rushed out to find the performers in varying states of distress. Her friend was nowhere to be seen.

"Oh, that face," one of the actresses was moaning as she came back. "I ain't never going to sleep."

Ignoring Frank's flustered exclamations at finding himself in a room filled with pretty girls Rose rushed to Tallulah and asked, "What happened? Where's Martha?"

"I don't know, she ran off stage!"

Her scream echoed through the air, and the group of four reacted instantly, sprinting towards the sound. They found the sewer entrance askew in the back.

"Damn it," Rose hissed. "They've got her. We've gotta get after her!" She zipped up her jacket, dashed to the sewer cover and pulled it back with the help of Jack. Frank hovered in the back, seemingly unsure of what to do.

"Where are you going?" Tallulah demanded.

"To find her," she said. The Daleks wouldn't have a single other victory, not under her watch.

"But who's taken her? What're you doing?"

Rose ignored her, climbing down the ladder to the sewers below. Above, she heard Frank trying to force out a stammered explanation and then -

"Oh, no way," Jack said. "You are _not_ coming."

"Hey, Handsome Jack Flash, I don't care if you _are_ a military man, you ain't bossing me around!"

* * *

Well they had found Laszlo, and he had agreed to take them to the place Martha was being held. The relief she had felt at seeing her friend unharmed was near palpable. In worse news, a Dalek hadn't been far away.

It rolled in all of a sudden and Rose had to bite back a growl as firey molasses roared through her veins.

"Oh, what the hell?" Frank breathed, looking appalled.

" _Sil-ence_ ," it ordered, as Laszlo cowered back from it in a corner. " _Sil-ence_."

Jack looked like he wanted to make some sarcastic remark at that, but miraculously managed to keep his mouth shut.

" _You will form a line. Move. Move_." Rose couldn't move. At the sight of it, she could barely think.

"Just do what it says, everyone, okay?" Martha called. Her voice held a slight tremble, and the sound of it cleared Rose's head; there was more at stake here than her. She needed to keep it together. "Just obey."

" _The female is wise_. _Ob-ey_."

Another Dalek rounded the corner and she hissed under her breath. _How many of them were there?_

" _What is the stat-us of the Fi-nal Ex-per-iment?_ "

" _The Da-lek-anium is in place_ ," the first Dalek reported. " _The en-er-gy con-duc-tor is now com-plete_."

" _Then I will ex-tract pris-on-ers for sel-ec-tion_."

One of the pigmen dragged an elderly man forwards. " _In-tell-igence scan, in-it-iate_. _Read-ing brain waves. Low int-ell-igenc_ e."

"You calling me stupid?"

" _Sil-ence! This one will be-come a pig slave. Next_."

The scene was horrifying, and as Rose watched the pigmen drag the struggling man away, she had to fight to keep her last dinner down.

"They're divided into two groups," Laszlo explained. "High intelligence and low intelligence. The low intelligence are taken to become pig slaves like me."

"Well that's not fair," Tallulah protested. "You're the smartest guy I ever dated."

"What about the others?" Rose asked. "The high intelligence ones?"

"They're taken to the laboratory."

"What for?"

"I don't know," he said. "The masters only call it the Final Experiment."

"That certainly don't sound good," Frank said, trying to quell his nerves as a Dalek approached.

Rose shrank back slightly, unsure of whether it should see her face. Was there any chance it might recognise her?

Frank had been scanned and the Dalek declared, " _Su-per-ior int-ell-igence._ " And then just like that, it was Martha's turn. " _Int-ell-igence scan, in-it-iate. Su-per-ior int-ell-igence_. _This one will be-come part of the Fi-nal Exp-er-iment_."

"You can't just experiment on people!" Martha protested. "It's inhuman!"

" _We are not hu-man_. _Pris-on-ers of high int-ell-igence will be ta-ken to the trans-genic lab-ora-tory_."

Well _that_ didn't sound good.

* * *

Indeed it wasn't. Marched up in silence to the laboratory and faced with a Dalek encased in black - which gave her a start, because it almost seemed as if these were the same Daleks as those from Canary Wharf - the group watched in horror as the aliens prepared for the Final Experiment.

" _You will bear wit-ness,_ " one of them screeched, and Rose tensed again as smoke began to pour from the black Dalek's casing.

It rose up into the drafters of the room and the smell of burning rubber almost made her gag - until it stopped, and a hissing noise began.

And then the Dalek casing began to open, and something almost _human_ crawled out.

"What is it?" Martha asked. Rose didn't answer. _Couldn't_ answer.

The humanoid creature did the job for her. "I - am - a human - _Dalek_ ," it said in a voice reminiscent of a human's, but with the same jilted trappings of a Dalek voice box. "I - am - your _future_."


	10. Evolution of the Daleks

**AN: So as I've said in past chapters, some of this story will consist of canon episodes and some of it will be original. I feel ready to get on with the original stories now, so I'm preparing to do so!**

"Oh my God," Rose said dumbly. She stared at the thing before her and as comprehension set in, her brain went into tailspin.

Sec's eyes narrowed. "The Doctor's companion. You - you are the Abomination!" he hissed, tentacles writhing.

She wrinkled her nose. "If anyone else called me that, I might be offended, but as it is…"

" _Ex-term-inate!_ " crowed one of the Daleks, gun twitching.

" _Wait!_ " Sec ordered, throwing up a hand. "Where is the Doctor?"

"Not here," she said. He would have been - fascinated? Was that the right word? A brand new Dalek race. Yes. It would have gripped him, for better or for worse.

"The Cult of Skaro escaped the Doctor's slaughter," Sec said.

"Escaped to… here?" She couldn't hide her confusion as she asked, "How'd you manage that then?"

"Emergency temporal shift." As if she was supposed to know what that meant. At her side though, Jack pulled a face so she assumed at least one of them had an idea.

"So you ended up in New York," she said. "And then you, what? It's like…"

"Like what?"

"Like you're hiding."

At the insinuation Sec's face twisted into an expression of deeper distaste. "We have been doing much more than just _hiding_. Look at me; I am _Dalek_ in human form."

"How's that working out for you?" Jack asked, raising his eyebrows.

Sec hesitated. "I feel…human."

Rose swallowed. "Yeah? And how's _that?_ "

"I feel everything we want from mankind, which is… _ambition_ , _hatred_ , _aggression_ , and _war_." He released a reverent breath, so filled with emotion it made her skin crawl. "Such genius for war."

"That's not what humanity is," she said.

"Oh, but I think it is," Sec said, meeting her eyes with his cyclops eye. "At heart, this species is so very, very _Dalek_."

"Like hell it is!" she exclaimed. Beside her, Martha looked almost _sick_ , but anyone would at hearing such a comparison.

Sec's stare turned somewhat antagonistic. "Denial won't help you here."

"Alright," Jack said, crossing his arms. "So tell us what you want, because this isn't getting us anywhere."

They were running for the slums of Hooverville before the Daleks could screech for order, after Jack, in a moment of ingenuity, shot one of the pipes above Dalek Sec's head and as steam spewed from it, chaos erupted. They fled while they had the chance and didn't look back.

Out in the freezing New York air, they made for Central Park with haste, none too keen to spend much time in the vicinity when Daleks or their cronies could appear at any moment.

Martha's look was still harrowed, and she thought her friend was lingering on their talk with the Daleks, so in a low tone Rose said, "Just think about this; when the flat three floors below mine burned down five years ago and the people there were left with _nothing_ , everyone in the building queued up to help them, and they didn't spend a _single_ night homeless or hungry." Martha's expression was still far from happy, but she was clearly listening. "Humans are far from perfect. We have our issues, and aggression is one of them, but just look at what happens when disaster strikes and you'll see what humanity is really made of."

She nodded slowly. "You know, when 9/11 happened so many people volunteered to donate blood that the hospitals had to start turning people away, their services were so overwhelmed."

"See? You let me know the day a Dalek does that, and Sec and I can talk."

Within the boundaries of Central Park, Rose and her companions gathered together with Solomon and hurriedly threw about plans. So far, they hadn't had any luck.

"There's got to be a way to reason with these things," Solomon said.

"Well there isn't, buddy," Jack said, crossing his arms. "I'm intimately familiar with the Daleks, and trust me, nothing in the world could stop them. Like serial killers; they don't stop until they _are_ stopped."

"Well can't we do that then?" Frank asked. "If you're familiar with them then you've seen them before and lived. Can't you stop them?"

"It's not that simple," she muttered, thinking of gold light and shuddering.

A loud whistle broke the spell and Solomon turned towards the sound. "They're coming!" a voice called. "They're coming!"

"A sentry." Solomon stood up straight, clearly prepared to fight. "He must have seen something."

A man was sprinting in their direction, frantically shouting, "They're here! I've seen them! Monsters! They're monsters."

"Oh, great," Rose said, straightening up. She exchanged a look with Jack then glanced at Martha, who looked tense but ready.

"We're under attack!" Solomon declared. "Everyone to arms!"

"Be prepared to run," Jack said, turning a glare on Solomon. "These things can't be stopped."

Solomon glared at him in turn. "Their pig servants can." He cocked the shotgun and turned away.

Rose pushed down her frustration and turned to Frank. "People are gonna get hurt," she said. "Go back there and try to get them to safety. Get as many people out of the park as you can. We'll be caged in here."

"We can't. They're on all sides. They're driving everyone back toward us."

"We're trapped," Tallulah moaned.

"Then we stand together," Solomon said. "Gather round. Everybody come to me. You there, Jethro, Harry, Seamus, stay together. They can't take all of us." And as the pigmen came closer, the people of Hooverville opened fire.

Solomon tried to make peace with the Daleks. Of course he did. A man with a heart like his would always try for peace. But it would always get him killed.

"I'm sorry, Rose," he said at her protests, "but this is my township." He turned back to the Daleks. "You will respect my authority. Just let me try. Daleks, ain't we all the same? Underneath, ain't we all kin?"He set down his rifle, and Rose knew he was lost. "Right. See, I've just discovered this past day, God's universe is a thousand times the size I thought it was." Dread built in her chest and made her feel sick. "And that scares me. Oh yeah, terrifies me right down to the bone. But surely it's got to give me hope." She closed her eyes tight, and held her breath. "Hope that maybe together we can make a better tomorrow. So, I beg you now, if you have any compassion in your hearts, then you'll meet with us and stop this fight. Well? What do you say?"

The response was expected, but still horrifying. " _Ex-term-in-ate!_ "

Screams rent the air and when a strange, primal tugging went for her heartstrings, she forced her eyes open… Solomon was still standing. Alive. Shell shocked, but alive. Dead in his place was Jack.

"He threw himself in front of it's shot!" Martha exclaimed, staring wide-eyed between their friend on the ground and the Dalek hovering above them all. Despite the stories about his apparent immortality, she knew that had he been a second late, or an inch off, Solomon would have lost his life.

"My God," the man himself gasped, stumbling away from the body and looking up at the Dalek with anger on his face. " _How could you -_ "

But before he could get himself shot for good, Rose made herself known. " _Right then!_ You wanna kill someone, kill me! You've enough reason to!"

 _"Rose!_

" Martha hissed furiously. She, stood before the body of one of her best friends, steadfastly ignored her.

 _"I will be the one to avenge the Emperor."_

If a Dalek could sound wondrous, this one did.

 _"Then go on! Do it!"_

 _"Ex-term-in-ate!_

" And though its gun was aimed her way, nothing happened.

But then the Dalek froze. " _I do not un-der-stand. It is the A-bom-in-ation."_ A significant pause _. "I ob-ey."_

"What the hell?" she hissed, eyes narrowing.

The Dalek refocused on her as if it had sensed her confusion. " _You will fol-low._ " And though she didn't want to leave Jack or Martha behind, she hardly had a choice.

"The deaths were wrong."

It was the first thing Dalek Sec had to say in the face of her fury. He was in comparison utterly calm, tranquil, even, and he faced her with a certainty that almost made her angrier.

"I… sorry?"

"That man," he said quietly, "your friend. He sacrificed himself for the leader of that community. They were both willing to die."

"Yeah, and one of them _did!_ " she roared.

"I am… sorry."

The air left her. "I - what?"

"I am sorry, for what happened to your friend."

Jack would, if he was telling the truth, be fine, but Sec didn't know that. "I - I don't know how to tell you this, but you're almost sounding _human."_

"I am the first of my kind." He met her eyes again, completely stoic. "I believe we have that in common."

"I'm human," Rose said on impulse. Despite her recent worries she was in no doubt about that.

"A human who can control the time vortex, absorb it and survive?" He shook his head and said, "You are unique."

"Whatever you say, mate. I'm not interested." A question struck her then, and she asked. "What did you have that Dalek spare my life for? Why?"

Sec's tentacles twitched. "We tried everything to survive when we found ourselves stranded in this ignorant age. First we tried growing new Dalek embryos, but their flesh was too weak."

"That's what I found in the sewers."

"It forced us to conclude what is the greatest resource of this planet," Sec continued as if there'd been no interruption. "Its people."

He threw a breaker switch, lighting up the whole place. Rose looked up to see hundreds of bodies floating above them, resting on stretchers. As she watched, Sec brought one of the stretchers down for her to examine.

"We stole them," Sec explained. "Look inside."

Rose pulled back the cover to see the face of the man laying on the stretcher. "This is the true extent of the Final Experiment."

Rose pressed her lips thin for a moment. "Is he dead?"

"Near death, with his mind wiped, ready to be filled with new ideas."

"Dalek ideas."

"The human-Dalek race," Sec corrected. Rose shook her head.

"How many of them are there?"

"We have caverns beyond this storing more than a thousand."

"Is there any way to restore them? Make them human again?"

"Everything they were has been lost."

"And you think that's okay. You've taken these people and _ripped their minds out of their heads_. You want to conduct this grand master plan from Earth, but at this point in time science is still just getting started! How're you gonna do it?"

"Open the conductor plan," Sec called.

"The Empire State Building," Rose said, looking up at the big screen.

"We needed an energy conductor."

"For _what?_ "

"I am the genetic template. My altered DNA was to be administered to each human body. A strong enough blast of gamma radiation can splice the Dalek and human genetic codes, and awaken each body from its sleep."

Most of that went over Rose's head. "Gamma radiation? I don't - but isn't that the sun?" she asked, reaching for what she could remember out of the many textbooks she had read in the last few months.

"Yes. Soon, the greatest solar flare for a thousand years will hit the Earth. Gamma radiation will be drawn to the energy conductor and when it strikes…"

He left the sentence hanging, but Rose was at least smart enough to finish for him. "When it strikes, the army wakes." She turned back to him, a glare on her face. "Well transformation's sent you more barmy than you were before if you think you'll get any help from me! I don't understand any of this, so even if I wanted to help you, which I don't, I couldn't."

Sec glared. "We have already begun the preparations. You are our only hope."

"And I'll be glad to disappoint," she snarled. Right then, an alarm blared through the room and she stepped towards the exit on instinct. "What the _hell_ is that?"

"What's happening?" Sec turned to his fellow Daleks. "Is there a malfunction? _Answer me!_ "

One of the Daleks turned its gun on Rose. " _The Abomination will be ex-term-in-ated."_

" _Stop!_ You will not fire.

 _"She is an en-e-my of the Da-leks."_

 _"And so are you,"_ another added, turning on Sec."I am your commander," Sec insisted. "I am _Dalek Sec._ "

 _"You have lost your auth-o-rity."_

 _"You are no lon-ger a Da-lek."_

With that, the Dalek on the left aimed its gun, screeched, " _Ex-term-in-ate!"_

Before Sec could do more than appear to be shocked, his body was alight with radiation, his warped skeleton shining white, and he fell to the ground.

"Their own _leader_ ," she gasped under her breath, eyes going wide.

But Rose wasn't keen on being exterminated herself that day, so when the Daleks had the pig slaves restrain her, she turned to see the slave holding her was Laszlo and tried not to smile.

"There's a lift just down the hall," he whispered.

"Ready to run when you are."

Needless to say, neither of them waited very long.

The Daleks had their slaves searching the building for her. She had heard them slamming down doors and communicating back and forth between each other from the lift as she and Laszlo rode up to safety.

"There's only got minutes before the gamma radiation reaches Earth," Rose said "If I can avoid them until then, we're okay, but I think they want my help, and they'd probably find a way to force my hand. Best avoid them until then. " It was only then that she noticed Laszlo was panting. "Laszlo? What's wrong?"

"Out of breath," he gasped. "It's nothing. We've escaped. That's all that matters."

Before she could argue, the doors opened and Rose could have cried with relief when she saw Martha, Jack not far behind her.

"Rose!" "Rosie!"

The two girls met halfway, and threw their arms around each other. The tight coil in her chest loosened slightly. Over Martha's shoulder, she sized Jack up. He really seemed fine.

Smiling weakly, she released Martha and said, "Definitely immortal then."

"Yup. Definitely."

Swallowing, she said in a low tone, "Jack, I really am sorry -"

"For what?" he asked. "Would hate to have been dead by Dalek _again_. Now, what's happened on your end?"

Before she could answer, Martha exclaimed, "We've worked it out! We know what they've done. There's Dalekanium on the mast."

" _Dalekanium?_ "

The sound of the elevator doors closing caught her attention, however, and she whirled back around as it began to descend. "No, _no!_ " She hurried back and tried to force the doors open. "Damn it!"

"Where's it going?" Martha asked.

"Back to the Daleks. They want my help, and they're not going to leave us alone up here when I haven't given it. What's the time?"

"Er, eleven fifteen," Frank said.

"Six minutes." Pushing down the swell of panic, she looked to Jack and Martha, awaiting instruction. "We've got to remove that Dalekanium before the gamma radiation hits."

"Gammon radiation?" Tallulah repeated. "What the heck is that?"

She hurried out to the scaffolding, Jack and Martha hot on her heels, and looked up. If her stomach dropped to her feet at the height, she didn't show it.

"Quite the climb," Jack said. "Perhaps best suited to a guy who can't die."

"Yeah, and what the heck is that?" Tallulah asked from behind them. "I've seen a lot of weird stuff tonight but I ain't ever seen a guy come back to life before. Just who are you people?"

She turned at that, and saw the native New Yorkers watching the trio with intense apprehension. Noticing a conspicuous absence, she asked, "Where's Solomon?"

"Stayed at Hooverville," Frank said warily. "People we're scared to high heaven. If he'd left too they would have rioted." She nodded; that was one person out of harm's way - she hoped. "You didn't answer our question…"

"I don't need to right now," she said. "Just know that we know what we're doing - generally. We've seen this sort of stuff before, and hopefully we can fix it."

"That's the mast up there, look," Martha said, pointing. She followed her finger and spotted it for herself. "There's three pieces of Dalekanium on the base. We've got to get them all off."

Rose saw a wooden ladder off to the side and nodded. "Sounds like a plan. Me and Jack'll take care of it. You stay down here and make sure the slaves don't get in here."

"Hang on!" Martha protested. "I'm not staying behind!"

"Look, the Daleks have the pig slaves searching the building for me," she said, trying desperately to impress upon her the importance of what she was saying. "If they make it in here, I trust you to keep Frank, Tallulah and Laszlo safe from them. Somehow. You're smart, Martha. So much smarter than me. You can do it."

She looked even unhappier at that, but nodded. "Fine. You two go. I'll take care of things down here."

She and Jack struggled against the freezing temperature and high winds to the top of the mast.

" _You cut the Dalekanium down_ ," she called to him over the roaring winds, " _and pass it to me!"_ Her plan was to place it down on the wooden scaffolding, or anywhere that didn't conduct electricity.

" _Got it!_ " he hollered. " _Ready when you are_."

And so with a time limit on their minds and the elements against them, they started in on the Dalek panels. Jack had with him some alien laser cutter, and they were making quick work of the first sheet of metal. It was a relief when it came free and he passed it carefully down to her. They did the same for the second sheet, but it was taking too long, she could feel it in her bones.

In the distance, thunder roared. Soon, it would be upon them.

"Keep going!" she cried over the howling wind. It was futile; lost amongst the cacophony. Even without her encouragement though, he was making swift progress on the third and final panel, though it did seem to be more stubborn than the previous two.

Thunder boomed again and this time, her bones themselves rattled at the magnitude. They didn't have long left. The winds stung her eyes and the rain blinded her and it was all she could do to keep her balance in her precarious position on the scaffolding. Jack had his collar turned up around his face for protection.

He was still hacking away at the final panel as lightning lit the night sky, electric and intense and _oh so close now_.

She could see his lips moving as he muttered to himself, and reached out her arms to receive the final panel just as it came loose -

When a terribly strong gust almost lifted her from the platform and the air left her lungs.

" _Rosie!"_

Grasping blindly for the ledge, she held on tightly enough to draw blood and steadied herself.

" _I'm - I'm okay!_ " she called, unaware of whether he could hear her or not. She held out her hands again. "Pass it down!"

With great caution, and great relief, he did, and when the lightning struck the mast seconds later, it did nothing at all.

"That was close," Jack said when they were back on stable ground. He paused and their eyes met, and he laughed. "Damn, was that close."

"Didn't fancy biting it twice in one day?" she asked, grinning weakly.

"It wasn't on my to-do list, no."

When they stepped back into the room where Martha and co had been, it was to the right of dead pig slaves, piled up in the entrance to the lift. Despite knowing what they would have done if not stopped, the sight made her want to cry. They too were just victims of the Daleks tyranny.

Martha met her eyes, expression grim but resolute; she was waiting for Rose to fight her on her solution. There was no fight reserved for her friend at the moment though. All of their hands were being forced.

"Right," she said as Jack surveyed the bodies. "Crisis averted."

"So now what?"

Tallulah was shuddering, but her expression turned alarmed when she saw Laszlo collapse against the wall, gripping his knees with his hands and wheezing.

"Laszlo, honey, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," he said, breathing heavily. "It's just so hot."

"But it's freezing in here! Rose, what's happening to him?"

"I have an idea or two," Jack said grimly. He was eyeing Lazslo with something akin to grief and the expression made Rose's stomach clench, but she didn't have the time to think about that. Instead,

"What are you doing?" Martha asked, watching her.

"It's me the Daleks want. I've ruined their plans… again. The obvious thing to do is call them to me. You lot should all get to safety. Jack, have you got anything that might help against rampaging Daleks?"

"Are you joking?" Martha asked, jaw dropping in disbelief.

"No, I'm not," Rose snapped. "Frank can take you back to Hooverville. Jack? Anything?"

"Let me think here, Rosie!" he said tersely. He was patting at his overcoat pockets and frowning.

Martha still wasn't happy. " _I'm not going!_ "

She was stopped from replying when the doors were broken down and a herd of the pig slaves flooded in. Tallulah shrieked and Frank cried out, all of them backing up further as rain water sloshed around their feet. They weren't far from the door if they could _only reach it_ -

"I'll try to hold them off," Laszlo said. "I look like one of them; I might be able to trick them."

" _Be careful!_ " Tallulah called after him as he moved off.

From the same door the slaves had emerged from, the remaining Daleks were fast approaching.

" _You will sur-ren-der!"_

"Not likely," Rose snorted. "Laszlo, come on!" He was trying to return to them but struggling against the slaves, who had latched onto him and were trying to force their way past, and she didn't want him to be left behind.

" _The Ab-om-in-ation will sur-ren-der! Ex-term-in-ate! Ex-term-in-ate!"_

" _Ex-term-in-ate!"_ echoed it's partner, who pointed their guns to the water pooled in from the rain. It changed the word that always preceded disaster, and the rain water was electrified.

Tallulah shrieked and howled and wrestled against Frank's straining grip, and a sort of detached calm overtook Rose's mind. All of the pig slaves lay dead before them. All of them.

It was then that Jack found what he was looking for - another clearly alien device that he shot two Daleks straight through with, but the third destroyed it before he could use it again.

"What happened?" Martha asked, looking frantically between she and Jack, and then to the body of Laszlo, slumped on the ground and to her horror, _steaming_. "What was that?"

"They killed them," she said. "Rather than let them live. Daleks to the end."

"But only two of the Daleks were destroyed," Frank said. "Means one of the Dalek masters must still be alive, right?"

"Oh yeah," she said, turning away. "There's always one. That's all it takes."

She left the group behind and headed straight back to the lab. There, waiting for her, was the lone survivor. The one thing that stood in the way of Dalek extinction. But Rose could see to that.

Anger roiled in her chest, potent enough to make her want to fight. She wasn't sure she would get very far trying to fight a giant pepper pot, though.

When she came upon the Dalek, she asked it, "After all this, the people you kidnapped, killed, experimented on… Laszlo's dead because of you. Now what?"

" _You will be ex-term-in-ated_ ," it replied.

"I've heard that before," she said, a bitter smile coming to her face. "Just stop and think about this, Dalek… what was your name?"

" _Dal-ek Caan_."

"Caan," Rose repeated. "Think about it. Your entire species has been wiped out. The Cult of Skaro's gone, and you're all that's left. Haven't you got anything to say about that?"

There was a beat of silence. " _E-mer-gen-cy temp-oral shift!_ " Caan cried, and he disappeared in a flash of light, leaving his carnage behind in Twentieth Century New York.

The sound of Tallulah's sobs echoed through the building, and Rose felt a part of herself break away. The Pig and the Showgirl. The end was predictable.


End file.
